The real Thanksgiving

“It is not joy that makes us grateful; it is gratitude that makes us joyful.””

Thanksgiving is coming, but it’s been a difficult year for Globe-Miami. And it can be hard to drum up a feeling of gratitude in the midst of trouble and darkness, when the floods and fires, the mud and the losses, just seem to keep on coming.

You do the best you can and look at the bright spots. The things you still have. The heroism and community inspired by the disasters. The things that nothing can touch. And that’s a lot.

Gratitude can mean the most when there doesn’t seem to be much to be grateful for.

It’s been that way since the beginning. Many of us learned a picture-book version of the first Thanksgiving: long tables groaning with food, everyone smiling and joining hands, problems solved.

But the real story was rougher than that.

In 1621, the English colonists at Plymouth had just survived a terrible winter. Half of them had died. Across the bay, the Wampanoag people were still recovering from a mysterious, devastating plague. Whole villages had been wiped out.

Both groups were grieving, both were struggling. No one knew what the next year would bring.

They came together that autumn out of need more than celebration. The colonists needed help, and the Wampanoag needed hope. Their leaders saw a chance for a strategic alliance that might help them all survive the winter to come.

So it was arranged that the colonists and the Wampanoag held a three-day harvest feast. No mountains of food and no fancy settings. They sat outside, on the ground or on barrels, and they ate what they had. Venison, wild fowl, and fish.

It wasn’t a Hallmark card. It was a brave, desperate gathering of strangers in the middle of the unknown.

We tend to imagine gratitude as something we feel after everything works out: the crops come in, the scan is clear, the kids are all getting along, the bank account looks healthy. Darkness and fear seem far away for a moment.

Then we bow our heads and say, “Thank You.”

But what do you do when things aren’t going so well? What do you have then?

Brother David Steindl-Rast is a Benedictine monk. He was born in 1926, lived through war, joined a monastery, and has spent his life talking and writing about gratefulness. 

One of his most famous lines is, “It is not joy that makes us grateful; it is gratitude that makes us joyful.”

In other words, we don’t sit around waiting to feel joyful and then say thank you. We start with “thank you” right in the middle of real life, and over time, joy grows out of that.

Not because everything that happens is good, but because life at its root is good, no matter what we’re experiencing at the moment.

The Bible defines faith as “the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.” Faith trusts that goodness is real and present, that we have much to be thankful for, even when we can’t see the full picture.

This Thanksgiving, your table might not look like a Norman Rockwell painting. Mine won’t.

There may be worries piled up alongside the mashed potatoes. There may be someone missing.

But even if you are eating alone, even if the blessings seem thin on the ground, there’s still reason for gratitude.

Gratitude that gives thanks for our blessings — for the light that comes into our lives — is one thing.

But there’s a deeper, more radical, and real gratitude that you can find even in the midst of darkness.

This kind of gratitude is the light.