American culture is known for many innovations surrounding the holiday season—not least of which is skipping straight from Halloween to Christmas. I hear we used to wait until after Thanksgiving to break out the Santa suits, but as far as I’ve seen, it begins to look a lot like December 25th…on November 1st. As much as I love Yuletide cheer, I fear we’re sleighing right over the one day we’ve set aside for gratitude.
St. Augustine of Hippo, an early 5th century bishop and theologian, had what some call a “doxological anthropology”—the view that humans’ highest purpose was praising God. It took me a while to process this claim. Indeed, worship can feel wooden, even boring at times. Then, I reflected on my truest moments of praise, the ones in which I felt the deepest gratitude toward God. They’re mostly cliché: getting lost in the beauty of a sunset, encountering the precious souls of those I love, melting into a congregation as we sing a hymn with gusto. At the purest moments of joy, I find my heart crying, Oh, my God, thank you.
If Augustine is right, if we are made for the purpose of praise and gratitude, we ought to take Thanksgiving—or, really, the practice of giving thanks—far more seriously. We ought to take thank you notes and magic words as more than common courtesy. We ought to make a habit out of gratitude, an art out of awe, finding reasons “always and everywhere” to “give thanks and praise.”
These words might ring hollow in a year of so much suffering and instability. For those of us in dire straits, they might even sound cruel. Who am I to pontificate about how much you have to be thankful for?
The answer is, no one. I have no right to repeat some tired adage about counting your blessings. Our world often seems to imply that sadness is a sin, but the witness of the Bible begs to differ—see, for example, the entire book of Lamentations. Prayers of woe are holy too, and I truly believe that God would rather hear our anger than nothing at all. Indeed, the cry of godforsakenness was uttered by the very Son of God (Matthew 27:46; Mark 15:34).
And yet, sometimes, praise sneaks up on us. Sometimes, there are moments of grace in our heartache. Suddenly, in the midst of a merciless storm, we find ourselves walking on water. Can we blame ourselves if our lament turns doxological? Does our gratitude invalidate our pain?
I say no. I say we can ask with wonder why God gives, even as we ask with frustration why God takes away. I say, holding space for what’s good in the world can be part of the work of making it better. So I invite us not to start decking the halls just yet—despite the fact that I’m sorely tempted to do so. I invite us to experiment with praise. I invite us to see if Augustine is right, to see if our souls feel at home in thanksgiving.
Finally, as I attempt this experiment myself, I offer this prayer:
Oh God,
Yours is the spirit of joy. Yours are the songs and the laughter of angels. Yours is the holiness of those we love, and those we don’t love yet.
We have suffered, wailed, and wept. We have held each other’s hearts. We have loved from a distance.
You have loved us beyond the bounds of time and space. You have walked in our very footsteps. In less than two months, we will celebrate the day you pitched your tent among us. Be with us, we pray, even as we wait for you.
Yours, God, is the light of day. May we also know you at midnight.
Yours, God, are the evergreen trees. May we also see you in snowfall.
Yours, God, is the dance of Creation. May we also find you in stillness.
We thank you for the ways we have already known, seen, and found you in our times of distress. We thank you for the ways we have missed each other. We thank you for the blessings of Zoom and Facetime, of groupchats and handwritten letters. We thank you for voices of justice and healing hands, for showing us what courage means. We thank you for the breath of life. We thank you for the rain that still fell, the crops that still grew, the sun that still rose, even when we doubted it.
You, in your goodness, stir our hearts to compassion and generosity. You call us to tend to each other. Help us, we pray, to answer your call.
Amen.
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