LOWELL GRISHAM: Stop, look and go

Intentional steps can lead to grateful living

Here's a New Year's resolution that could make this year better than last year: Practice gratefulness.

Brother David Steindl-Rast may be the world's best gratefulness mentor. He has been through a lot. When David was 12 years old, Hitler annexed his home, Austria. David spent his teen years under the shadow of Nazi occupation and war. You learn not to take anything for granted when bombs fall nearby nearly every night, he says. David was drafted into the Nazi army. He managed to escape, and his mother hid him until the occupation ended. His family emigrated to the U.S., and David followed them. (I think of mothers today in Central America helping their teenage sons flee from being drafted into violent criminal gangs, hoping to join family in the safety of the U.S.) David Steindl-Rast became a Benedictine monk and a scholar.

"If you want to be happy," Brother David says, "be grateful!" This survivor of Nazi occupation offers a simple, three-step method to nurture gratefulness:

  1. Stop.

  2. Look.

  3. Go

We rush through life and miss so much. To experience gratitude the first thing we must do is to stop, even for a split second. Be quiet! Open your senses.

Look at the present moment. Every moment is a gift, and within that moment's gift is an opportunity. What opportunity presents itself to you here and now? Embrace it happily.

Go! Make a chosen response in the moment. What is the opportunity before you right now? Do something, a chosen response.

Usually the opportunity of the moment invites us to enjoy something here and now. Often the moment offers some present duty for us to do with conscious focus and intention.

Occasionally the moment calls us to suffer something. Of course we cannot be grateful for some things, violence or an illness. Yet we can always be grateful for the next breath; grateful to be alive in this moment. Breath and life are gifts. Be alive now. We can learn to suffer courageously, with consciousness and hope. Christians place suffering within our story of Christ's cross, making all suffering meaningful; trusting that suffering brings new life.

Brother David says it is important to acknowledge our anxiety, but we must never fear. The word "anxiety" comes from a root meaning "narrowness" and choking. The original anxiety is our birth anxiety. We come into the world suffering. It feels like a life-and-death struggle. If we proceed through the narrow path, it brings new birth. If we resist the path, we die in the womb.

Look back at some of the anxious, tight spots in your life. Often, years later, you can look back and see them as the start of something new.

In anxious moments, stop and look. Quietly experience a sense of gratefulness for being alive in the present moment. Then go and do whatever opportunity is the most available act of generosity, compassion or concern for the well-being of all.

Gratitude is a momentary experience. Gratefulness is a state of being.

Brother David offers an image of a candle burning warm and steady in a dark room. A moment before, however, the room was dark. Then a match flared and brought light. Be aware simultaneously of all three conditions: the light, the flash of the match and the darkness before that. In that awareness is a glimpse of the mystery of origination. Every flower, every face begins in a womb of darkness. The darkness is only the "not yet light." Be aware, secure, courageous in moments of darkness. When it is in your power, light a match.

As we start 2019, there is considerable darkness. Many people suffer threats and violence. Earth's environment is changing. Our president sows chaos, division and hostility.

This is a moment of opportunity for us to act out of generosity, compassion and concern for all. Stop. Look. Go. What can we learn from this difficult moment? How can we grow and become stronger? Challenging moments are opportunities to grow, to become stronger, to be courageous for good. You can be unhappy, yet joyful, says Brother David. Joy is the happiness that doesn't depend on what happens. That kind of joy is my wish for you in this new year.

(Find more from Brother David at gratefulness.org, his TED talk and his On Being interview with Krista Tippitt.)

Commentary on 01/01/2019

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