The Slow Way: Stop, Get Quiet
If we learn to stop, get quiet so we can really look, then our gratitude becomes more than a feeling. It becomes something we carry into our ordinary lives.
We’ve been making a Thankful Tree on the wall of our kitchen since the kids were tinies. I’d form a trunk as big as their bodies with butcher paper, and they’d help me tape it to the wall. We’d shape the branches and stretch its arms across the wall. We’d cut out leaves from construction paper. Red, yellow, orange. And I’d leave the basket of leaves on the nearby table, with some markers or crayons. “Don’t forget to write down your thankfuls!” I find myself shouting to the large humans who now grace my kitchen. They scratch them down and tape them to the tree. When August went through his very long shark phase as a toddler, our thankful tree was full of gratitude for hammerheads, baskingsharks, and dogfish heads. (Also a couple of Mommys and Daddys for good measure.) I’ve loved watching how his leaves have changed through the years. The friends he’s thankful for, the ideas, the dreams that show up on that tree.
This Thanksgiving I’ve been thinking more about gratitude than usual. A couple of weeks ago I heard from a friend who asked if I had any ideas around the spiritual practice of gratitude. In a moment of refreshing and profound joy, she wants to do something true and meaningful with all that goodness.
Honestly I’ve been at a loss, thinking and thinking on it, and not yet getting back to her. It’s not that I haven’t read the books, or had my own gratitude practice through the years. (Anybody here remember Thankful Tuesday on the Mama Monk blog, circa 2011?!) But the practice of gratitude still seems conceptual to me, as if there are only two ways of thinking about it—as a list you make, or as a feeling. Neither feels particularly right.
I’ve written about gratitude around here as a form of paying attention, of noticing our lives. Gratitude as the overflow of attending to the world. I believe that. But when my friend reached out I wanted to offer her something concrete, a form of “Thankful Tree” for our everyday lives.
What does it mean to practice gratitude as an ongoing response to our lives? Is gratitude always prayer? Is gratitude always a response to paying attention to the world?
I thought about responding to my friend with a basic gratitude journal answer, but I knew she was looking for more. I thought about encouraging her to make big poster size thankful lists on those giant sticky notes and hang them all over her apartment. I thought about giving her the idea of a gratitude-examen, meditating at the end of her day and noticing each moment of beauty and goodness. All of these things would have been a way to practice being grateful.
And then I watched a Ted Talk, one from Benedictine monk David Stendl-Rast on gratitude. He said there’s a method to practicing gratitude moment by moment—Stop. Look. Go— “We have to stop. We have to get quiet. And we have to build stop signs into our lives.”
This is the answer I was looking for. Not just a starting a gratitude journal, or even practicing an end of day gratitude prayer practice, but letting our days become our prayers by stopping, by getting quiet, by paying attention, and then by making something beautiful of our gratitude.
What I like about Brother David’s idea is the deep truth of learning to “stop” and “get quiet.” I think we all know that need in us. Stopping in the middle of our daily lives is always going to be hard. We are people who (rightfully) fill our lives with work, friends, and tasks. This is part of being human, and also a truth about our culture. We live in an efficient and busy world. The countercultural way to live in that world is the way that invites us to slow down our commute, to stop when something’s beautiful and look at it, to take our earbuds out at the store so we can say hello to the person behind the cash register, and maybe even to make and eat a slow dinner.
One of the great gifts of my life as the mom of an autistic boy with Down syndrome, is that every afternoon at 3:30, no matter the weather, I have to stop my work, walk down the stairs, bundle up and head outside to wait for his school bus. I stand in front of the open school bus doors and take a deep breath while he slowly places each foot on each step. I cheer when he gets to the bottom on his own, without holding my hand (or jumping into my arms without permission). I follow him to the swing on the tree in the front yard, which he climbs on in the cold, in the heat, and sometimes in the snow. I push him until he’s ready to go inside.
Here’s the thing: It doesn’t matter if I have a writing deadline, if the house is a wreck, if I need another long conversation with the same insurance service representative I spent time with yesterday. Ace’s life asks me to stop. And when I do I breathe again. When I do I feel the sweetness of this world. Yes, life involves deadlines and hour-long insurance conversations, and the picking up of the house. But, the life I long for is the one I find in the front yard with Ace—his giggles as he flies higher and higher into the sky, his cheeks pink from the chill in the air.
What is gratitude?
Brother David says it isn’t happiness that makes you grateful. It’s gratefulness that makes you happy. “We experience something that’s valuable to us. It’s also a gift. You haven’t earned it,” he says. “When these two things come together…then gratefulness spontaneously rises in my heart.”
“Look at the faces of the people you meet. Each one has an incredible story behind their face, a story that you could never fully fathom. Not only their own story but the story of their ancestors. We all go back so far. And in this present moment on this day, all the people who made all that life from generations and from so many places all over the world, flows together and meets you here, like a life-giving water if you’ll only open your heart and drink.”
Maybe the practice of gratitude is opening our hearts and drinking the lifegiving water all around us.
That’s still abstract isn’t it? And maybe there’s no way to nail down a definitive understanding of thanksgiving. But if we learn to stop, get quiet so we can really look, then our gratitude becomes more than a feeling that rises up inside us. Because the third act of gratitude is to go, to do something with the response, with the feeling. Maybe what we do is write it down. Maybe we pray thank you. Or maybe we shape our next action in response to the gift we’ve noticed.
I push Ace’s swing, knowing that the gift is his life is forming my own. And hopefully, when I head back to the grind, I have my priorities in order. Hopefully I’m paying more attention.
St.Thérèse of Lisieux said, “Jesus does not demand great actions from us but simply surrender and gratitude.”
May your Thanksgiving be filled with surrender and gratitude so you can see beyond the concerns of your day, and all the way down to the “lifegiving water” you’re invited to open your heart and receive.
A Slow Practice
In his Ted Talk, Brother David shared how, after having come home from a place that didn’t have running water, he was overwhelmed with gratitude for his faucet. Until he wasn’t. Until he began to forget how good it had been to have running water whenever he needed it. We all know how that goes. We are terribly sick for a week and when we finally feel better, we think, “I’ll never take my health for granted again!” Until, of course, we eventually forget the gift of it. How do we practice remembering throughout the day?
Brother David put a little sticker on his faucet to remind him.
What small things can we do to remind ourselves of the gifts?
Our practice right now is to jot down five daily gifts you want to notice in your life. It can be anything, but I want you to choose five things that you see often, gifts that fill you up in moments when you’re tempted to focus on the difficulties instead of the joys.
Make sure you have a journal or a piece of paper near you. Also, this practice asks for either stickers, or masking or painters tape. Go get your supplies! Then find a place to sit in silence.
When you’re ready, take a moment to center yourself in the presence of God.
Breathe in.
Breathe out.
Breathe in: Hello, Giver of Good Gifts.
Breathe out: Help me pay attention.
Breathe in: Hello, Giver of Good Gifts.
Breathe out: Help me pay attention.
Stay with this prayer as long as long as serves you. And when you’re ready, transition to a time of gratitude.
Write down the five things in your life you want to pay attention to this week. What do you want to be grateful for? The food in your fridge? The beauty of your walking path? Your neighbors? The family you’ll see for the Thanksgiving holiday? Write those five things down and sit for a moment with each of them, imagining the gift of them as life-giving water you’re invited to drink. What will it mean for you to choose to receive these things with joy?
Write your thoughts down next to each thing on your list.
Your last task is to think creatively about what will help you come back to these five things this week. Maybe you should put a sticker on the fridge to help you remember to say thank you when you open the door to your food. Maybe you put a sticker on your front door to remind you of your gratitude for the neighbors before you go out. Maybe you put a piece of painter’s tape on your walking shoes so you consider the gift of the outdoor space you walk to and love. Maybe it’s a sticker on your phone screen to remind you of the people in your life you communicate with through that tiny screen.
How will you “Go” with your gratitude this week? Spend time some time making a small commitment to pay attention: to stop, look, and go.
A Note:
I’m taking a Thanksgiving break next Friday! There will be no Slow Way Letter or Slow Way podcast the Friday and Tuesday after Thanksgiving. We’ll be back with fresh content on Friday, December 1. Happy Thanksgiving everyone! I’m grateful for all of you.
This is lovely. Thank you for these reminders.
Thank you, Micha. I'm grateful for you as well.