“Forming a Practice of Hope” is a monthly guide that will be published throughout the 2025 Jubilee Year in the Catholic Church. It is designed to spark a personal spiritual practice that is flexible and doable and is meant to be a road map that examines dynamics of the creative life and spiritual life. Read the other monthly guides here.
Begin with gratitude. This simple lesson is one that I have revisited over and over, to remember, to deepen, to help with any adjustments I need in my outlook. We hear it as children, but it takes a bit of ripening before we fully appreciate the wisdom in it.
When we first learned how to pray the Examen as Jesuit novices, we were invited to broaden our idea of thanksgiving and gratitude by reading an article by George Aschenbrenner, SJ. In his thoughts about our prayerful look back at the day, he wrote about developing a sense of reflective thanksgiving:
“Our gratitude should center on the concrete, uniquely personal gifts that each of us is blessed with, whether large and obviously important or tiny and apparently insignificant. There is much in our lives that we take for granted; gradually God will lead us to a deep realization that all is gift. It is only right to give praise and thanks!”
It seems that there are two ways to look at our lives: with gratitude so that all is gift, or with expectation, which almost always leads to entitlement.
Gratitude is the antidote to entitlement. It is the doorway to appreciation, which in turn leads to joy. Training ourselves to notice the concrete things in our day that evoke a sense of gratitude can also build us up in hope. Remembering our daily gifts and consolations and storing them up avoids the demand of entitlement or expectation. Instead, it allows us to remember the joy and hope for another glimpse of it the next time we engage in reflective thanksgiving.
Begin with gratitude. This simple lesson is one that I have revisited over and over.
In the Spiritual Exercises, Ignatius describes our gratitude as our response to an experience of God’s love. So many of Ignatius’ principles for the spiritual life remind us that to begin with gratitude orients us to our loving relationship with God and recognizes the moments in our lives where that love is concrete.
Life story:
I’ve written earlier about my experience working with the Community for Creative Non-Violence, collecting castaway food to be used for those in need. This was before there were sanctioned channels to harvest it, and we did it under cover of night. On occasion, people working at grocery stores whose dumpsters we would sift through noticed us, engaged with us, and helped us out by putting things aside to make it easier for us to access it.
Gratitude is the antidote to entitlement. It is the doorway to appreciation, which in turn leads to joy.
One night, a store manager put aside a crate of milk that was just on its sell-by date. When we came back to the community, you would think it was Christmas morning. “Milk? They gave you milk?” “Who gave you milk?” “Hey guys, they got MILK!” My mind went back to the novitiate, to moments of my entitled annoyance when there was not enough milk in the fridge to go with the chocolate chip cookie in my hand. Even worse, I actually felt justified in my annoyance. But this was a different story. The genuine excitement and appreciation in the room was contagious and uplifting. Something that I have taken for granted so often, for them was an occasion of gratitude.
Work Story:
My first New York Times review was for a production of Paul Sills “Story Theatre.” The play was a joyous romp through fables and stories that engaged the imagination of both the performer and the audience. I was working with a talented cast, and we spent much of the time grateful for being able to do what we do as artists — until expectation was introduced to the equation.
The producers asked us to add a matinee performance because the show was doing well. We agreed but were concerned that there wouldn’t be much of an audience because the new performances were added so late. They assured us that they had that under control, building up an expectation for us all.
It seems that there are two ways to look at our lives: with gratitude so that all is gift, or with expectation, which almost always leads to entitlement.
When we got to the first matinee, there were four people in the audience: the director, the producer, the company manager and the photographer. My entitled self was furious… and it started to come out in my performance, killing most of the joy that I had rehearsed. Then a group of four children came in. They seemed to be from one family, with the oldest one being about 12. They sat in the front row. I was able to put away my own attitude for long enough to think “ok, today we do it just for them.” After about five minutes, the 12-year-old leaned over to her 10-year-old brother and said, “This … is excellent.” The edge that I had built up with my expectation was immediately gone. I was able to remember the joy and the gratitude we felt in our rehearsals and early performances of the show. These four young audience members taught me how my own expectations can make gratitude so fragile, but that if I am open the excellent surprises before me, how quickly a spirit of gratitude can return. It was one of our best performances.
Further investigation:
Read George Aschenbrenner’s article on the “Consciousness Examen.”
Suggestions:
- Write an old fashioned “thank you” note to a friend or family member.
- Pray one of the Psalms of gratitude like Psalm 65, Psalm 75 or Psalm 104.
- Keep a bowl with slips of paper next to it. Each time you recognize something to be grateful for, write it on a slip of paper and put it in the bowl. When you need to remember what you have to be grateful for, take a slip out of the bowl and pray with it.
- Walk around your neighborhood with the intention of seeing one concrete thing that evokes gratitude for you. Take a photo or just pray with the memory.
- Adopt the phrase “all is gift” as a mantra for the day. Each time expectation or entitlement begins to crowd in, replace it by repeating the mantra as many times as necessary.
- The next time you cook something, think of all the steps it took for that food to end up in your kitchen. Think of all those whose work made it possible for you to have this meal and think of them as you prepare it.
- Draw a goofy cartoon character that embodies your own sense of humor of expectation or entitlement. Use it to learn to laugh at the things that keep you from being grateful.
- Watch this video on gratitude by Br. David Steindl-Rast.