Value for Thursday of Week 47 in the season of Harvest and Celebration

Being Grateful

Norman Rockwell, Freedom from Want (1943)

Gratitude is one part of a holy trinity of what is desired. Faith is in the present, hope looks to the future, and gratefulness looks to the past.

I don’t have to chase extraordinary moments to find happiness – it’s right in front of me if I’m paying attention and practicing gratitude. [Brené Brown]
We learned about gratitude and humility – that so many people had a hand in our success . . . [Michelle Obama]
Gratitude makes sense of our past, brings peace for today, and creates a vision for tomorrow. [Melody Beattie]
When you arise in the morning give thanks for the food and for the joy of living. If you see no reason for giving thanks, the fault lies only in yourself. [Tecumseh]
. . . I am almost contented just now, and very thankful. Gratitude is a divine emotion: it fills the heart, but not to bursting; it warms it, but not to fever. [Charlotte Brontë]
. . . thanks are the highest form of thought; and that gratitude is happiness doubled by wonder. [G.K. Chesterton]
. . . once you begin to take note of the things you are grateful for, you begin to lose sight of the things that you lack. [attributed to Germany Kent]
In ordinary life, we hardly realize that we receive a great deal more than we give, and that it is only with gratitude that life becomes rich. [Dietrich Bonhoeffer]

We can be unhappy about our lives, or we can choose to be grateful. Regardless of our circumstances, the latter is the better choice. Being grateful is a way of being open to the good. It may not change our immediate circumstances but over time, it will exert positive effects.

In one study, a “gratitude intervention managed to increase positive affect, subjective happiness and life satisfaction, and reduce negative affect and depression symptoms.” A systematic literature review in 2021 revealed: “Gratitude interventions might be effective in improving mental health, but their effects on well‐being remain unclear.” In another systematic review from 2021, “. . . all of the selected studies demonstrated the importance of positive psychology interventions with young children to promote positive aspects of development, such as gratitude, positive emotions, life satisfaction, accomplishment, positive relationship, or self-esteem.”

“. . . gratitude lessened mental health difficulties and fostered positivity at the onset of the (COVID-19) pandemic . . .” In a study on cardiac patients: “Optimism and gratitude at 2 weeks post-ACS were associated with higher self-reported adherence and improved emotional well-being 6 months later, independent of negative emotional states.”

Gratefulness can be studied organically. It “may be a means of improving both emotion regulation and self-motivation by modulating resting-state (functional connectivity) in emotion and motivation-related brain regions.” Researchers have “developed a new interpersonal paradigm to independently and parametrically manipulate two antecedents of gratitude in a helping context, namely, the benefit to beneficiary and the cost to benefactor, to examine their representation and integration in the beneficiary’s brain using fMRI.” In another study: “. . . stimuli used to elicit gratitude were drawn from stories of survivors of the Holocaust, as many survivors report being sheltered by strangers or receiving lifesaving food and clothing, and having strong feelings of gratitude for such gifts. . . For each gift, they rated how grateful they felt. The results revealed that ratings of gratitude correlated with brain activity in the anterior cingulate cortex and medial prefrontal cortex . . .”

Real

True Narratives

Books on gratefulness generally:

Peter J. Leithart, Gratitude: An Intellectual History (Baylor University Press, 2018).
Jeremy David Engels, The Art of Gratitude (State University of New York, 2018).
James Crooks, Bach’s Architecture of Gratitude: On the Genius of the Mass in B Minor (McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2024).
Glenn Robins, A Debt of Gratitude: How Jimmy Carter Put Vietnam Veteran's Issues on the National Agenda (University Press of Kansas, 2024).
Margaret Visser, The Gift of Thanks: The Roots and Rituals of Gratitude (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2009).
Cleo Hicks Williams, Gratitude for Shoes: Growing Up Poor in the Smokies (iUniverse, Inc., 2005).
Todd Aaron Jensen, On Gratitude: Sheryl Crow, Jeff Bridges, Alicia Keys, Daryl Hall, Ray Bradbury, Anna Kendrick, B.B. King, Elmore Leonard, Deepak Chopra, and 42 More Celebrities Share What They're Most Thankful For (Adams Media, 2010).
Walter Green, This Is the Moment!: How One Man's Yearlong Journey Captured the Power of Extraordinary Gratitude (Hay House, 2010).

Gratefulness for life:

Harold S. Kushner, To Life!: A Celebration of Jewish Being and Thinking (Little, Brown & Company, 1993).

Celebrating biodiversity is a way to be thankful but, perhaps more important in an era in which species are vanishing at an alarming rate, a reminder of how much we have to lose.

Colin Tudge, The Variety of Life: A Survey and Celebration of All the Creatures That Have Ever Lived (Oxford University Press, 2000).
E. O. Wilson, ed., Biodiversity (National Academy of Sciences, 1996).
Edward O. Wilson, The Diversity of Life (Belknap Press, 1992).
Otto Latva, et. al., eds., Arrivals and Departures: The Human Relationship with Changing Biodiversity (De Gruyter, 2024).
Rick Darke & Douglas W. Tallamy, The Living Landscape: Designing for Beauty and Biodiversity in the Home Garden (Timber Press, 2014).
Alisdair McIntyre, ed., Life in the World's Oceans: Diversity, Distribution and Abundance (Wiley-Blackwell, 2010).
Gene Helfman, Bruce B. Collett, Douglas E. Facey and Brian W. Bowen, The Diversity of Fishes: Biology, Evolution, and Ecology (Wiley-Blackwell, 2009).
Robert G. Foottit and Peter H. Adler, eds., Insect Biodiversity: Science and Society (Wiley-Blackwell, 2009).
Peter S. Ungar, Mammal Teeth: Origin, Evolution, and Destiny (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2010).
Dean Falk, Primate Diversity (W.W. Norton & Co., 2000).
Ian Redmond, The Primate Family Tree: The Amazing Diversity of Our Closest Relatives (Firefly Books, 2008).
Dorothy Hinshaw Patent, Biodiversity (Clarion Books, 1996).
Jonathan Slaight, Owls of the Eastern Ice: A Quest to Find and Save the World’s Largest Owl (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2020): “Slaght’s hope, and the premise of his engaging tale, is that uncovering the secrets of this mysterious raptor will help win it protection. In conservation, saving one species often means saving many.”
Rebecca Giggs, Fathoms: The World in the Whale (Simon & Schuster, 2020): “Spurred by her encounter with the doomed humpback, she questions the conventional wisdom that all is well with whales now that conservation campaigns have helped their populations rebound over the last few decades.”

Videos:

Every art celebrates life. An excellent example is the quiet but joyful art of quilting.

Martha Sielman, Masters Art Quilts: Major Works by Leading Artists (Lark Books, 2008).
Mary Lou Weidmann, Quilted Memories: Celebrations of Life (C & T Publishing, 2001).
Jenny Carr Kinney, Quilting Designs from the Past: 300+ Designs from 1810-1940 (C & T Publishing, 2009).

Gratefulness for bounty: The culinary arts celebrate abundance. Great cookbooks are listed on the sites of the International Association of Culinary Professionals and the James Beard Foundation. You can search these and other sites, where you will find award-winning cookbooks, rich narratives of culinary art and history, and many schools of thought within each broadly defined tradition.

Technical and Analytical Readings

Robert Emmons and Michael E. McCullough, The Psychology of Gratitude (Oxford University Press, 2004).
Ashraf H. A. Rushdy, Philosophies of Gratitude (Oxford University Press, 2020).
Joshua Glasgow, The Solace: Finding Value in Death through Gratitude for Life (Oxford University Press, 2020).
Jonathan R. H. Tudge & Lia Beatriz de Lucca Freitas, eds,, Developing Gratitude in Children and Adolescents (Cambridge University Press, 2018).
Priscilla Roth & Alessandra Lemma, eds., Envy and Gratitude Revisited (Routledge, 2018).
David Carr, ed., Perspectives on Gratitude: An interdisciplinary approach (Routledge, 2016).
Philip C. Watkins, Gratitude and the Good Life: Toward a Psychology of Appreciation (Springer, 2014).
Robert Emmons, Thanks!: How Praciticing Gratitude Can Make You Happier (Mariner Books, 2008).
Robert Emmons, Thanks!: How the New Science of Gratitude Can Make You Happier (Mariner Books, 2007).
M.J. Ryan, Attitudes of Gratitude: How to Give and Receive Joy Every Day of Your Life (Mango Publishing Group, 2024).
Nina Lesowitz and Mary Beth Sammons, Living Life as a Thank You: The Transformative Power of Daily Gratitude (Viva Editions, 2009).
A.M. Wood, J.J. Froh and A.W. Geraghty, "Gratitude and well-being: A review and theoretical integration", Clinical Psychology Review, 2010 Mar. 20.

Photographs

Documentary and Educational Films

Imaginary

Fictional Narratives

Hugo ends the volume on Cosette with a comment of Valjean’s gratefulness. Hiding with Cosette in a convent, he reflects on two pivotal times in his life:

Everything that surrounded him, that peaceful garden, those fragrant flowers, those children who uttered joyous cries, those grave and simple women, that silent cloister, slowly permeated him, and little by little, his soul became compounded of silence like the cloister, of perfume like the flowers, of simplicity like the women, of joy like the children. And then he reflected that these had been two houses of God which had received him in succession at two critical moments in his life: the first, when all doors were closed and when human society rejected him; the second, at a moment when human society had again set out in pursuit of him, and when the galleys were again yawning; and that, had it not been for the first, he should have relapsed into crime, and had it not been for the second, into torment. His whole heart melted in gratitude, and he loved more and more. Many years passed in this manner; Cosette was growing up. [Victor Hugo, Les Misérables (1862), Volume II – Cosette; Book Eighth – Cemeteries Take That Which Is Committed Them, Chapter IX, “Cloistered”.]

After learning that Valjean had saved him from death, Marius expresses his thanks:

Cosette, do you hear? he has come to that! he asks my forgiveness! And do you know what he has done for me, Cosette? He has saved my life. He has done more--he has given you to me. And after having saved me, and after having given you to me, Cosette, what has he done with himself? He has sacrificed himself. Behold the man. And he says to me the ingrate, to me the forgetful, to me the pitiless, to me the guilty one: Thanks! Cosette, my whole life passed at the feet of this man would be too little. That barricade, that sewer, that furnace, that cesspool,--all that he traversed for me, for thee, Cosette! He carried me away through all the deaths which he put aside before me, and accepted for himself. Every courage, every virtue, every heroism, every sanctity he possesses! Cosette, that man is an angel!" [Victor Hugo, Les Misérables (1862), Volume V – Jean Valjean; Book Ninth – Supreme Shadow, Supreme Dawn, Chapter V, “A Night Beyond Which There Is Day”.]

. . . there was one human creature whom Quasimodo excepted from his malice and from his hatred for others, and whom he loved even more, perhaps, than his cathedral: this was Claude Frollo. / The matter was simple; Claude Frollo had taken him in, had adopted him, had nourished him, had reared him. When a little lad, it was between Claude Frollo’s legs that he was accustomed to seek refuge, when the dogs and the children barked after him. Claude Frollo had taught him to talk, to read, to write. Claude Frollo had finally made him the bellringer. Now, to give the big bell in marriage to Quasimodo was to give Juliet to Romeo. [Victor Hugo, Notre-Dame de Paris, or, The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1831), Volume I, Book Fourth, Chapter IV, “The Dog and His Master”.]

“Well!” she interposed with a smile, “tell me why you saved me.” / He watched her attentively while she was speaking. / “I understand,” he replied. “You ask me why I saved you. You have forgotten a wretch who tried to abduct you one night, a wretch to whom you rendered succor on the following day on their infamous pillory. A drop of water and a little pity,—that is more than I can repay with my life. You have forgotten that wretch; but he remembers it.” / She listened to him with profound tenderness. A tear swam in the eye of the bellringer, but did not fall. He seemed to make it a sort of point of honor to retain it. [Victor Hugo, Notre-Dame de Paris, or, The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1831) Volume II, Book Ninth, Chapter III, “Deaf”.]

Novels:

Cynthia D’Aprix Sweeney, Good Company: A Novel (Ecco, 2021): “The constant internal struggle between what the heart wants versus what it should be grateful it already has serves as the primary emotional engine . . .”

Poetry

I celebrate myself, and sing myself, / And what I assume you shall assume, / For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you. / I loafe and invite my soul, / I lean and loafe at my ease observing a spear of summer grass. / My tongue, every atom of my blood, form'd from this soil, this air, / Born here of parents born here from parents the same, and their parents the same, / I, now thirty-seven years old in perfect health begin, / Hoping to cease not till death. / Creeds and schools in abeyance, / Retiring back a while sufficed at what they are, but never forgotten, / I harbor for good or bad, I permit to speak at every hazard, / Nature without check with original energy.

[Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass (1891-92), Book III: Song of Myself, 1.]

At length their long kiss severed, with sweet smart:
And as the last slow sudden drops are shed
From sparkling eaves when all the storm has fled,
So singly flagged the pulses of each heart.
Their bosoms sundered, with the opening start
Of married flowers to either side outspread
From the knit stem; yet still their mouths, burnt red,
Fawned on each other where they lay apart.

Sleep sank them lower than the tide of dreams,
And their dreams watched them sink, and slid away.
Slowly their souls swam up again, through gleams
Of watered light and dull drowned waifs of day;
Till from some wonder of new woods and streams
He woke, and wondered more: for there she lay.

[Dante Gabriel Rossetti, “Nuptial Sleep”]

Music: Composers, artists, and major works

Ludwig van Beethoven's Symphony No. 6 in F Major, Op. 68, "Pastoral Symphony, or Recollections of Country Life” (1808) (approx. 38-46’) (list of recorded performances), presents musical images of peasants spending a joyous day in the country. The Pastorale “offers eloquent testimony to the importance and power of nature in Beethoven's life. The composer reveled in walking in the environs of Vienna and spent nearly every summer in the country.” In it, “we have caught a glimpse of Beethoven’s state of mind, or at least one facet of the complicated prism of his being.” “Beethoven’s notion of the heroic in Symphony No. 6 is a figure at one with and in Nature, variously resting in its bosom, celebrating its bounty, fearful of its sublime might, and in the end, expressing thanks to its Creator for all of these states. Beethoven’s own words expressed that his desire is to have the listener feel the journey, not just see series of images. Thus, the heroic object of this particular symphonic journey is the subject—the careful listener experiencing the piece.” By happy circumstance, this day on our liturgical calendar usually coincides with the Thanksgiving holiday in the United States. Top recorded performances were conducted by Pfitzner in 1930, Toscanini in 1937, Erich Kleiber in 1953, Karajan in 1953, Klemperer in 1957, Böhm in 1971, Carlos Kleiber in 1973, Harnoncourt in 1991, Tennstedt in 1992, Järvi in 2009, Krivine in 2010, Antonini in 2010, Rudin in 2010 and Savall in 2021.

First movement, Allegro ma non troppo: “Awakening of cheerful feelings upon arrival in the country”
Second movement, Andante molto mosso: “Scene at the brook”
Third movement, Allegro: “Happy gathering of country folk”
Fourth movement, Allegro: “Thunderstorm”
Fifth movement, Allegretto: “Shepherds’ song: cheerful and thankful feelings after the storm” [Listen especially to the interplay between the female (violins) and male (cellos) voices.]