Holy Through Thanks: Mindful Gratitude

 I found this blog post by Richard Beck very stimulating. First of all, I enjoyed the articulation of something that has long been a part of my spirituality that is spiritual practice.

 Thankfulness marks the boundary between the sacred and the profane.

In the Slavery of Death I argue that gratitude accomplishes this because the object in question--which includes not just possessions but also things like your time, attention, status and your very life--is relocated in the mind by thankfulness, making us able to "lose" and "let go" of the object as we live for and share with others. Thankfulness sanctifies the world because thankfulness creates the capacity to use things--by letting them go or sharing them--in holy ways. 

For me it has long seemed that blessing is first about thanksgiving. When Jesus blesses the bread and wine at table with his disciples, we understand that such a blessing involved the normal Jewish practice of giving thanks for the gift of food, and perhaps for God's mighty acts. This would have been the main content of the words of blessing. Consecration is first and foremost about gratitude and thanksgiving. This involves a recognition of the goodness of the thing (or person) and of its or their place in the purposes of God. In a sense this is to recognise that the thing or person is already consecrated. It is to become aware of something that is already true: that all things come from God and are meant to serve God's good will for all things. Consecration isn't something God does. It is something that we do in response to God's goodness and in recognition that we may play a part in God's good purposes by receiving and passing on appropriately what has been shared with us. If thankfulness marks the boundary between the sacred and the profane, then we know that the boundary exists mainly in and runs through our minds and attitudes.

And then it seems to me that gratitude, embedded in our outlook by the practices of thankfulness, is a fundamental means by which our ability to live in a godly fashion is bolstered and enabled in practical terms. What I have written as 'embedded in our outlook' is, I think, what Richard means by 'relocated in the mind'. Consecration by blessing (ie thanksgiving) is something that happens in our minds rather than in the world because it is actually a usually-unrecognised fact about the world (seen by the eyes of faith only). It is a re-orientation of outlook which by repetition may become a habit of outlook and a bedrock of the practice of the presence of God and of the discernment of grace in the world.

As such, we can understand it to be a mindful practice. And I mean that in something of the sense of mindfulness as the practice of giving sustained attention to something and of doing so in an open, curious and compassionate  (perhaps 'loving' or 'appreciative') way. It seems to me that practices of giving thanks are likely to be mindful in this sort of way. Whether these are practices of 'saying grace' over food and other things we consume or encounter in life, or whether this is something like the practice of counting our blessings or Examen. Each of these practices are ways, with repetition, to change our brains and hence our minds.

Experimental Theology: The World Is Made Holy Through Thanks: