The Beauty and Importance of Gratitude: “My Heart Overflows”

Our world seems a little short on gratitude. We have expectations and demands, and we have entitlements. But we have so much to be thankful for. Perhaps that’s the problem – so many blessings and forgetting what the source is. 

My Heart Overflows: A Treasury of Readings, Poems, and Prayers on Gratitude is a relatively small but beautiful book that reminds us to be grateful. Assembled by the editors of Paraclete Press, the work is 144 pages of artwork and text that each speaks to gratitude, why we feel it and show it, and how we can be thankful for it.

 

You can pray with Francis of Assisi, observe Walden Pond with Ralph Waldo Emerson, celebrate beauty with Gerard Manley Hopkins, consider what you mother has done for you with Maya Angelou, and be thankful for the rain with Luci Shaw. Helen Keller is here, as is John Greenleaf Whittier. 

 

You can feel the evening wind with William Cullen Bryant, read what G.K. Chesterton said about St. Francis, see why you should enjoy life (Charlotte Bronte did), and discover what George Washington was grateful for about his new nation. Emily Dickinson believed there was nothing without gratitude (and she wrote a poem about it). And you can pray and be thankful with Jane Austen and the church father Clement of Alexandria and discover what Abraham Lincoln was so thankful he declared a national day of Thanksgiving (as did James Madison). 

 

The paintings included in the artwork includes those by Childe Hassam, Winslow Homer, Claude Monet, Albert Bierstadt, Jan Steen, Vincent Van Gogh, Henri Matisse, Gustav Klimt, Giotto, and John Constable, among many others. The book is profusely illustrated, each painting chosen to illustrate the themes of thankfulness and gratitude.

 

I love beautiful books, and My Heart Overflows is a beautiful book. In fact, you could say I’m grateful for the time, care, and attention the editors at Paraclete used to create this volume.

 

Painting: The Thankful Poor, oil on canvas (1896) by Henry Ossawa Tanner (1859-1937), one of the illustrations used in the book. 

Some Monday Readings

 

Chaos in Aurora – Christina Buttons and Christopher Rufo at City Journal. 

 

The Imminent Russia-US War – Christopher Caldwell at Compact Magazine.

 

Kristallnacht – The Night of Broken Glass – poem by Brian Yapko at Society of Classical Poets.

 

Writing for an Audience of One – Terry Whalin at The Writing Life.

 

Things Worth Remembering: The Imperfection of America – Douglas Murray at The Free Press.

Thanksgiving

It’s a new year, and instead of starting with resolutions (which I’m always bad about keeping anyway), I’d like to begin with thanksgiving for all of the things I experienced, all of the things I learned, and all of the blessings I received in 2011.

I learned about disability. A bulging disc pressed a nerve and turned my life upside down. I learned dependence upon others. I learned to slow down because I had to slow down. An activity that had been a big part of my life for more than six years – biking – suddenly wasn’t. I learned a little about patience.

I learned about writing. I wrote more than I ever have before. If what I write on this blog is representative of my writing overall, and it is, then I wrote more poetry than I ever have before.

I read more than I have in recent years (possibly because I wasn’t biking). My reading was almost exactly, if unintentionally, in “thirds” – one third fiction, one third poetry and one third non-fiction. That’s a shift from previous years – more poetry. And of the non-fiction I read, a significant chunk was about writing fiction and poetry.

I learned that I like ebook readers (Kindle) and tablets (iPad).

I learned that I still cry at movies. And it’s still embarrassing. (I even cried at “The Muppet Movie.”)

I learned about publishing a book. I’m still rather amazed that it happened. It’s a lot of work. Writers generally don’t like to hear that they have to promote their work, and learn marketing and publicity. Writers want to write. But these days, writers have to promote and publicize, too.

I learned publishing also means trust. I trusted my editor, my publisher, my cover photographer and my cover designer. Trusting them was the smartest thing I did in publishing Dancing Priest.

And publishing means learning how readers respond. You hope people will like what you write, or be inspired or provoked or encouraged or challenged or something. But I’m still surprised. I’ve read blog posts and reviews and emails about my book, and I don’t feel gratified; I feel humbled. I’ve been brought to tears a few times.

I learned how much I don’t know. The older I get, the more I realize how much I don’t know.  I was a lot smarter in my 20s and 30s, or at least I knew a lot more then than I do now.

I learned about family. My oldest discovered he was to become a father again, which meant I discovered I was going to be a grandfather again. My youngest moved from Kansas City to Florida, and I learned, or relearned, that distance involves the pain of separation. I learned that my wife is a rather extraordinary project manager, with the remodeling of our kitchen, laundry and bathrooms and new flooring everywhere. I learned that my grandson loves to dance, and that he creates music in my heart.

I learned that my grandson and I are a lot alike – especially in how we’re learning about the world, learning with a child’s heart. I hope that’s something he and I never lose.

I learned I have much to be thankful for.

Photograph: Candles in Church by Vera Kratochvil via Public Domain Pictures. Used with permission.

Thankfulness for Grandmothers

I didn’t know either of my grandfathers – my mother’s father died when she was 12 and my father’s father died when I was nine months old – but I knew both of my grandmothers, and knew them well. Being a grandparent is much on my mind these days, and I wrote about it over at The High Calling a few weeks back.

My maternal grandmother died when I was 25; she was in her 90s and had been ailing for some time. She was a daughter of German immigrants who came from Alsace-Lorraine after Germany took control of it after the Franco-Prussian War. (Yes, they had been Germans living in French-controlled territory, and left once the Germans took over. There’s a story there, but no one in the family knows it.)

Her name was Lillian, and she was married three times. Her first marriage – to her first love – ended after his death following confinement in a mental institution. She had discovered him one day sneaking up behind her with a knife in his hands, and she kept her wits about her and told him to put the knife down, which he did, and then realized what he had been doing. Her second marriage was to my grandfather; they had five girls and a boy, who collectively have proliferated into hundreds by now. My grandfather died from a ruptured appendix in 1935, leaving her to care for the children remaining at home. She became a cleaning woman for movie theaters, and spent a lot of hours on her hands and knees scrubbing floors. My mother can remember times of having nothing in the house to eat except perhaps bread.

What my “Gramma” passed on to her children and grandchildren was uncomplaining persistence and determination in the face of often terrible adversity. The personification of stubbornness, she could also be rather mischievous, and unpredictable. She shocked the entire family by falling in love in her late 70s and marrying for a third time – more than 30 years after the death of my grandfather. She ignored the protests of her daughters, and Gramma Jacob became Gramma Anderson.

My paternal grandmother, known to her grandchildren as “Gram,” was born in 1889. Her name was Martha. By the time she was five years old, she was working in a cotton mill in Mississippi. I never heard a word about her father; her mother, know the family as “Granny,” was a tobacco-chewing, no-nonsense, do-whatever-I-have-to-do woman who was rumored to have killed either a husband or a gentleman friend. Almost the polar opposite of her mother, my grandmother married my grandfather – 10 years her elder – when she was 16, and they were married for 47 years until his death. They had five children, four of whom lived to adulthood.

My grandmother lived in Shreveport, and I lived in New Orleans, but she was the grandparent I was closest to. The firstborn son of her only son, I was something of a favorite, but she likely made all of her grandchildren feel like that. For six or seven years, until she started growing older and more infirm, I spent a week every summer with her, just the two of us, tooling around Shreveport in her old Ford sedan. That week included the full array of her Southern Baptist church activities – worship and Sunday School on Sunday, ice cream social, Wednesday night prayer meeting, and visits to other elderly ladies.

From her I learned the importance of loving-kindness, gentleness and faith. I also learned that you didn’t have to know music to be able to sing in church – she played piano and sang solos at worship services well into her 80s, and couldn’t read a note of music.

I wouldn’t be where I am in my own journey of thankfulness, and thankfulness for my own grandchild, without these two women. And with each passing year, I grow more thankful for having had them as a part of my life.

Bonne Gray at Faith Barista has been leading a blog series on faith. Check her site for more links to posts on thankfulness.

Top photograph: Kneading Dough by Donna Cosmato via Public Domain Pictures. Used with permission. Bottom photograph: Grandpa and Cameron Young, Nov. 15, 2010, taken with Grandpa's smart phone. Used with Cameron's permission.