On Generosity, Rev. Josh Pawelek, November 2, 2025

Our November ministry theme is nurturing gratitude, which aligns very obviously with the Thanksgiving holiday later this month; though for me, it’s not the holiday that gives us the theme. For me it’s all the features of autumn—changing, falling leaves, dropping temperatures, decreasing daylight hours, increasing darkness—and perhaps most importantly, the conclusion of the growing season in these northern latitudes—the harvest, the reaping, the preparations for winter—all of it ancient, all of it familiar to human beings for millennia. All of it gives rise to feelings of gratitude, if we let it. All of it gives rise to our collective instinct to acknowledge and celebrate the blessings of our lives, to give thanks.

            Over the years I’ve come back again and again to a meditation entitled “Thanksgiving” by my colleague, the Rev. Lynn Ungar, originally published in 1996 in her Skinner House book entitled Blessing the Bread. I shared it in my newsletter column this month. I love how, for her, seasonal changes in the land speak to gratitude deeply ingrained in our hearts: I have been trying to read / the script cut in these hills— / a language carved in the shimmer of stubble / and the solid lines of soil, spoken / in the thud of apples falling and the rasp of corn stalks finally bare. / The pheasants shout it with a rusty creak / as they gather in the fallen grain, / the blackbirds sing it / over their shoulders in parting, / and gold leaf illuminates the manuscript / where it is written in the trees. / Transcribed onto my human tongue / I believe it might sound like a lullaby, / or the simplest grace at table. / Across the gathering stillness / simply this: “For all that we have received, / dear God, make us truly grateful.”

            In the end, the patterns of this autumn season give rise to a very simply prayer: May I be grateful.

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            I assume that feeling gratitude is good for us. I assume the practice of rituals that center our gratitude is good for us. I assume expressing our gratitude out loud to others is good for us psychologically, emotionally, physically, spiritually. There’s solid data to support these assumptions, including a landmark 2003 study entitled “Counting blessings versus burdens: An experimental investigation of gratitude and subjective well-being in daily life,” published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.[1] The authors are Robert A Emmons at the University of California Davis (also editor in chief at the Journal of Positive Psychology) and Michael E McCullough at the University of California San Diego. The study’s abstract explains how participants in three separate studies were randomly assigned to various experimental conditions and asked to keep records of their moods, coping behaviors, health behaviors, physical symptoms, and overall life appraisals. Participants in what they called the “gratitude-outlook” groups exhibited heightened well-being across several, though not all, of the outcome measures relative to the comparison groups. “The effect on positive affect appeared to be the most robust finding. Results suggest that a conscious focus on blessings may have emotional and interpersonal benefits.”[2]

            I found a 2023 New York Times article entitled “Gratitude Really is Good for You: Here’s What the Science Shows,” by the journalist Christina Caron. She mentions the Emmons-McCullough study and sums up the results of numerous other studies over the past two decades. She finds substantial evidence that gratitude practices have a positive impact on mental health, reducing symptoms of depression and anxiety, increasing self-esteem and improving satisfaction with daily life. Gratitude is also known to improve sleep and lower blood pressure. “Multiple studies have shown,” she writes, quoting Sara Algoe, a psychologist at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, “that expressing gratitude to acquaintances, co-workers, friends or romantic partners can offer a relationship ‘boost’ and ‘helps bind us more closely.’”[3] 

            If you’re skeptical or weary of all the talk about gratitude in this season or at any time of year, I’m simply pointing out that scientists have run peer-reviewed experiments on the ways gratitude practices impact our lives; these studies have been repeated and expanded upon over the years; and there is solid data to support the claim that gratitude is good for us.

            And yes, in addition to the science, there is a lot of talk about gratitude and, at least for some, it is wearying. I used to get annoyed at how ubiquitous the admonition to be grateful is in our wider culture. Of the tens of millions of self-help and personal wellness books on brick-and-mortar and virtual shelves, I wouldn’t be surprised if half of them either have the words “gratitude,” “thankfulness,” or “blessings” in the title or subtitle or, minimally, feature a chapter about gratitude, thankfulness or blessings. I notice Dr. Emmons has published many books in this genre: The Little Book of Gratitude: Create a Life of Happiness and Well-Being by Giving Thanks, Thanks: How Practicing Gratitude Can Make You Happier, Gratitude Works, and Words of Gratitude for Mind, Body and Soul, with an introduction by the Benedictine monk, Br. David Steindl-Rast, who has a wonderful website, “Grateful Living,”[4] and an excellent Ted Talk, “Want to be Happy? Be Grateful,” which has been viewed over 10 million times.[5] Which reminds me that in addition to all the books, the virtual and online worlds are overflowing with articles, blogs, podcasts, day-time talk shows, Pinterest Boards and Ted Talks. Some of it is really good. Some of it less so. Some of it comes from multi-millionaire pop psychologists and pseudo-spiritual gurus just trying to cash in. I used to roll my eyes, smugly—not only because so much of this content—like so much of the self-help genre in general—seems so corny—platitudes with no real substance—but also because it always made me feel, as an ordained clergy-person, that anytime I wanted to talk about gratitude, I couldn’t do it without sounding like a self-help book. Nurturing gratitude is one of the purposes of religion. Nurturing gratitude requires deep spiritual engagement. Get out of our lane you self-help hucksters! Leave gratitude to the clergy and the psychologists!

            I don’t roll my eyes anymore. I’m no longer annoyed. The prayer is really very simple: May I be grateful. If any message ought to be ubiquitous, the message that there are benefits to nurturing gratitude in ourselves and our communities is certainly one of them regardless of where it comes from. How better to counter in our own lives the many negative health and wellness impacts of the daily authoritarian onslaught emanating from our nation’s capitol? How better to fortify ourselves, to build up our resilience, to stay calm and focused, to stay hopeful? It really doesn’t matter where the message comes from, as long as we learn to say our version of the prayer: May I be grateful.

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            Last weekend a number of you forwarded me a link to a piece published in “The Morning” newsletter of the New York Times titled “Personal History,” subtitled “The good things in our lives are the result of fantastic webs of interconnected prerequisites.”[6] The author, Melissa Kirsch, who writes “The Morning” newsletter and describes her beat as “broadly about how to live a meaningful life,” is also a bit skeptical and weary of all the talk of gratitude. She’s sharing her gratitude practice, but she says “I get a little uncomfortable talking about it because I’ve seen the same hashtags and semi-smug social media posts that you have, the same living-room art with cursive script on distressed wood about the ‘attitude of gratitude.’ The concept has been so commodified, overprocessed, merched-up, that it seems as if there’s little else to say about it — call it the platitude of gratitude.” So, she rolls her eyes too! But I really like her practice and I want to commend it to you.

            She describes her practice as more ornate than the typical gratitude journal or jar. She says “I will think of something small — say, this weird little deck of “wisdom cards” that I draw from each morning as a sort of daily fortune cookie. Then I think about how my friend Melanie gave me the deck and how generous and playful she is, and how lucky I am to know her. But I wouldn’t know her if I hadn’t taught creative writing with her in a summer program in the 1990s. I wouldn’t have had that job if my friend Alden hadn’t recommended me for it, and I wouldn’t know Alden if I hadn’t gone to graduate school with her, and I wouldn’t have gone to graduate school without the encouragement of my undergraduate writing professor, and I wouldn’t have taken her class if not for … you get the picture."

She continues: "It’s almost a game, tracing the present-day gratitude back through all the causes and conditions that gave rise to it. It’s also immensely satisfying, and mystifying — look how many things had to transpire in order to bring this deck of cards into my life. Simple gratitude is focused on a one-to-one relationship: These cards make me happy. Thinking through this circuit of prerequisites amplifies the gratitude, scales it, brings me into contact with the multiple interdependent factors necessary to bring these cards into my life.”

I invite you to take a moment and contemplate something in your life that offers a simple pleasure. For Kirsch it was her deck of wisdom cards. Maybe it’s a favorite coffee mug, a bird feeder, a particular song or piece of music you love to listen to, a special recipe, a neighbor you spend time with, a lamp in the corner, a favorite book—a simple pleasure. How did it come into your life? What was the source? And then ask again, what was the source of the source? And then ask again. Follow the path back as far as you can. Notice the connections, the relationships, the dependencies. Notice the precariousness of it all: If I hadn’t gone on my walk that day, I never would have met that person…. If I hadn’t been in that accident, I never would have gotten that gift…. If that total stranger didn’t track me down to return my wallet….

Kirsch says “We’re all connected, related, dependent on one another, but of course we forget this all the time. We forget that every action we take has a whole cascade of unintended consequences. We forget that we’re a factor in someone else’s circuit of gratitude, a link in innumerable chains. And so often we feel separate, lonely, disconnected. One way to challenge that feeling is to start with one small thing you’re grateful for. Then trace the gorgeous, improbable but very real sequence of variables that brought you the object of your gratitude. It may seem a little corny at first, but it works.”[7]

Again, I commend this practice to you. I suspect, if you can trace back far enough, you’ll come eventually to the script cut into the hills, the thud of falling apples, the pheasants’ rusty creak, the departing blackbirds’ song, the trees’ gold-leaf illuminated manuscript. I suspect you’ll come in time to that ancient human insight that it is good and right to acknowledge and celebrate the blessings of our lives. If you can trace back far enough, I suspect you’ll come in time to the plainest of utterances: a lullaby or a simple grace at table. And across the gathering stillness, I suspect you’ll come to Rev. Ungar’s prayer: “For all that we have received, dear God, make us truly grateful.”

Amen and blessed be.  

[1] Emmons, R. A., & McCullough, M. E. (2003). Counting blessings versus burdens: An experimental investigation of gratitude and subjective well-being in daily life. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 84(2), 377–389. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.84.2.377 

[2] Read the abstract at https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2003-01140-012.

[3] Caron, Christina, “Gratitude Really Is Good for You. Here’s What the Science Shows,” New York Times, June 8, 2023. See: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/08/well/mind/gratitude-health-benefits.html.

[4] Visit Grateful Living at https://grateful.org/brother-david/.

[5] View Brother Steindl-Rast’s Ted Talk at https://grateful.org/resource/want-to-be-happy-be-grateful/.

[6] Kirsch, Melissa, “Personal History: The good things in our lives are the result of fantastic webs of interconnected prerequisites,” New York Times, The Morning Newsletter, October 25, 2025. See: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/10/25/briefing/personal-history.html.

[7] Kirsch, Melissa, “Personal History: The good things in our lives are the result of fantastic webs of interconnected prerequisites,” New York Times, The Morning Newsletter, October 25, 2025. See: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/10/25/briefing/personal-history.html.