"Gratitude is the fairest blossom which springs from the soul; and the [human] heart...knoweth none more fragrant." Those are the words of our eminent 19th century Universalist minister, Hosea Ballou. He's right! Gratitude is such a precious virtue to cultivate in our lives. No matter what your theological or philosophical bent, a heightened sense of gratefulness opens life's gateway to heaven. I spoke about Mr. Ballou and his theology a couple years ago. I have such gratitude for the Universalists and for the understanding they introduced into American society, regarding the nature of life.

Mr. Ballou, who was born in New Hampshire, originally served congregations in New Hampshire and Vermont as a circuit riding preacher. Many of the early Universalists still held the Calvinist belief that human beings are inherently defective. But unlike the Calvinists they believed a loving God, after a suitable period of punishment for our wrong-doings, would save all of us from damnation. In the end there would be universal salvation, not just the few as the Calvinists believed. But Ballou took his understanding of a loving God one step further.

According to his insight into God's nature, there would be no period of punishment. He determined that sin, by its very nature, separates us from that which is good in life. Alienation from the source of goodness is punishment in and of itself. If we believe, as did our Universalist ancestors, that God is love, or if we simply believe that love is an essential and central attribute of our lives, then we might understand sin, which in Hebrew is defined as "missing the mark," as whatever we do or say that misses the mark in our efforts to convey our love for life.

An anecdote about Mr. Ballou portrays him riding his circuit from one town to the next. As he is riding along he encounters another circuit riding minister who is of the Calvinist persuasion. I can imagine how this conversation unfolded. "Lo, headin' to Hartland?" "Ah-yuh, yuhself?" "Ah-yuh." Then a long period of silence. "You that fella, Ballou, I bin hearin' bout?" It would have been a safe guess because Ballou's appearance was distinctive. He was handsome and quite tall for people of that time. He was notable, as well, in that he was a self-taught preacher who developed a sophisticated theology. He had become infamous among the orthodox for spreading Universalist beliefs which, of course, the orthodox feared because they thought that by eliminating peoples' fear of hell, inherently corrupt people would behave even more corruptly.

So, after the conversation had proceeded for a while, the Calvinist minister blurted: "Mr. Ballou, if I believed as you do, there'd be nothin' to keep me from hittin' you ovah the head and stealin' all your belongin's." To which Ballou responded, "My good sir, if you believed as I do, such a consideration would have never entered your head." Because of Ballou's belief in a loving God, his whole understanding of life, and his approach to life had shifted. It had matured from the child-like understanding that good behavior resulted only from fear of punishment, to an understanding that true goodness resulted from our desire to experience, to express, to be in touch with Love's source. Our misbehavior occurs when we miss the mark and lose touch with our life's wellspring.
Sin is any behavior that deadens us to life. It's any behavior that's inherently life denying and says "No" to life.
Grasping such a concept can be a struggle and wrapping our lives around it can be even more difficult. It's like the fellow in The New Yorker cartoon who upon leaving church, inquires of his wife, "How can I love my enemies when I don't even like my friends?" Whenever I say or do something mean-spirited or uncaring, then, with each word and action I am severing myself from life. If I consistently turn away from those who are in need, then my heart hardens against love's entreaties. I am cut off from life's wellspring and my soul grows barren. In his book, Quest for God, Abraham Joshua Heschel wrote: "It is gratefulness which makes the soul great."

Rabbi Heschel was a remarkable teacher and mystic who lived in the 20th century. He understood that for our souls to grow in greatness and fertility, we had to "regain a sense of the mystery that animates all beings…Who is worthy to be present at the constant unfolding of time. Amidst the meditation of the mountains, the humility of flowers-wiser than all alphabets…we are hating, hunting, hurting…How strange we are in the world, and how presumptuous our doings! Only one response can maintain us: gratefulness for witnessing the wonder, for the gift of our unearned right to serve, to adore, and to fulfill."

Among the traits that separate us from life's wellspring, one of the most insidious in our society is our excessive sense of entitlement. People are entitled to a number of things- freedom, justice, shelter, food or access to medical care, for example. But our society's shared sense of entitlement goes far beyond such considerations. Another New Yorker cartoon captures the American experience perfectly, depicting a couple returning from the hospital with their newborn. As they walk into their home the baby is shown scowling and thinking, "Oh, great humble beginnings."

It starts at an early age. Certainly, I was well trained as a youngster. I have learned I should expect to have choices to insure my desires are properly met. It's no matter that most of the choices are insignificant. Should I choose seaweed green or lemon yellow? Should I buy the gadget with these features and those accessories, or the gadget with those features and these accessories? And after mulling over the pros and cons and finally buying one of them, I discover they are even cheaper at Circuit City. And through these daily transactions we learn we should expect to have our needs met down to even the details. Entitlement, as I said, can be insidious as well as dangerous. Our national sense of entitlement, for example, fuels our belief that we should continue to have access to cheap gas, regardless of the costs to other people or the earth.

An exaggerated sense of entitlement by its very nature hardens our hearts. It engenders hubris in place of humility. When we believe ourselves to be entitled, our capacity for gratefulness diminishes until it disappears. When we believe we are supposed to have all that we have, as well as more, then gratefulness loses meaning. Why should we be grateful for what we've got coming? A sense of entitlement results in hardened hearts and shrunken souls. It is by cultivating an attitude of gratefulness to replace our sense of entitlement that we may save ourselves from ourselves. It is in learning to accept all life brings us as gifts and offering our gratitude for them that will enrich our lives.

I say accept all life brings us as gifts intentionally but with trepidation. I can think of any number of things life may bring me that I would be hard pressed to perceive as gifts. Even the minor medical condition I have called blepharospasm, that causes my eyes to feel tense and to twitch I struggle to experience as a gift or to encounter with gratefulness. Yet, how important it is to our life's well-being to deepen our sense of gratitude even, or perhaps especially, in the face of life's hardships.

My former parishioner and friend, Philip Simmons, who died from Lou Gehrig's disease a year and a half ago, wrote the book, Learning to Fall: The Blessings of an Imperfect Life. Phil's book describes how he came to experience his disease as a gift and how his capacity for gratefulness grew even as his physical capabilities diminished. "The violence I suffer every day," he wrote, "is the slow, niggling kind committed by a degenerative illness bent on emptying me out one teaspoon at a time. Every day, I relearn that suffering is an activity of the mind…But my illness is just a particular form of the universal human malady."

He continued, "We all suffer the limitations of our humanness: not just our aches and pains, but our fear, our anger, our pettiness, our grief…On a recent evening I attended my son's and daughter's first piano recital, a kind of event I normally dread. Children, parents and grandparents
packed the small old church in the village center." Phil's six-year old daughter, Amelia, went first. He wrote, "I endured a stretch of terror watching her march solemnly to the front, climb onto the piano bench, and play a flawless rendition of that immortal classic, 'Fuzzy Baby Bird.'"

"It turned out to be a wonderful recital…[W]e were treated to what I had least expected: an evening of good music. Still, in the midst of it, I found myself growing sad. With my weakened and trembling hands I can no longer play the piano or the guitar as I once did, and the more beautiful the music I heard that night, the more keenly I felt the loss. I knew such feelings came from what the Zen Buddhists call, 'small mind,' from my grasping, fearful self, unable to let go and simply enjoy the moment. So I took heart, thinking that at least someone was playing, that these children were carrying on where I no longer could."

"But then something more happened, something I could barely put into words. All of a sudden it was as though I were playing the piano but playing through these children. Only it was no longer a matter of 'me' and 'them.' We were playing the piano. For a few moments I broke through into what is called 'big mind,' that state of being in which the illusion of our separateness falls away,
when our attachments dissolve, and we experience the boundlessness of our true nature." [Philip Simmons, Learning to Fall: The Blessings of an Imperfect Life 85-6.]

Did you follow the transitions in this story? Phil began by describing his feeling of dread about the whole affair, then terror on behalf of his daughter. But as the evening wore on, he began experiencing gratefulness for the quality of the music. His heart started to open and what happened? Rather than happiness, he felt sadness, for the beautiful music reminded him of his loss. Gratefulness does not always lead to happiness. Rather it leads to a heart that's more opened, and that may evoke any number of emotions. To feel grateful is not necessarily to feel happy, but it is to feel and to experience life's vitality.

For Phil, however, the experience didn't end there. "So I took heart," he wrote, "thinking that at least someone was playing…" I interpret his taking heart to mean he did not shy from his feelings of sadness, and in so doing, he experienced an even greater sense of gratefulness with his appreciation "that at least someone was playing." Then, the illusion of separateness fell away. Phil was a person committed to spiritual practice, and I suspect that his deep understanding helped him move through those transitions. Yet what is important to note is the role his experience of gratefulness played in opening his heart to the dis-covery, the uncovering, of his true self. To live with gratitude is to live with the deepest faith in life. It was such faith that allowed the spiritually awakened author, Anne Morrow Lindbergh to write these words:

Praise life - Praise life…
In ecstasy
The end foresee.

A final cry
From earth to sky,
Tree, fruit and flower,
Before the hour
Of sacrifice:

Praise life, O man
While yet you can.

Having experienced one of life's greatest tragedies in a highly publicized case in the 1930's when her first child was kidnapped and murdered, years later, Mrs. Lindbergh could still say, "Praise life."

To live in a continual state of thanksgiving is a way of grounding ourselves in our hearts and of grounding our everyday existence in our faith in life. To live with deep and sincere gratitude is how we vitalize the human spirit. As Hosea Ballou said so many years ago, "Gratitude is the fairest blossom which springs from the soul; and the [human] heart...knoweth none more fragrant." So may we discover.