The Rhythm of Gratitude

Yesterday, I wrote an introduction to Resurgence Magazine. Today, I'd like to provide a sample. The following is an excerpt from an essay in the latest issue. The essay is called "The Rhythm of Gratitude" and it is written by David Orr, author of the book "The Last Refuge."

In the beginning was the Great Heart of God that set the rhythms of the universe in motion - first the Big Bang... The beat heard through the still-expanding Creation and in the pulsations of energy and light that animate the cosmos. In the beginning was the Great Heart of God and that rhythm drives the journeys of our little planet around its small star. Day follows night; one season follows another. The Great Heart of God beats in the Dance of Life, the ebb and flow of the tides, the migration of birds, the rhythms in our bodies, and the seasons of our lives. Break the rhythm and our little part of the cosmic dance stumbles to a halt. But in the beginning and forever: the rhythm of the Great Heart of God.

But it was not long before others, more sophisticated and clever, realised that they could change the rhythm of Creation. The heroes of disharmony, men like Bacon, Descartes and Galileo, taught us that we could and should conduct the symphony and in Bacon's words "put Nature on the rack and torture her secrets out of her to the effecting of all things possible." And so in time we learned how to make things never made by Nature; we learned to split the atom and to manipulate the code of life. In the conquest of Nature (and of humans) the rhythm changed to those of the business cycle, the product cycle, the electoral cycle, the seasons of fashion and style... The rhythms of commerce, greed, power and violence. But we did not know what we were doing, as Wendell Berry once said, because we did not know what we were undoing.

Now we live in a time of consequences. Climate scientists have given us an authoritative glimpse of a literal Hell not far in the future. Scientists fear that we are fast approaching the threshold of runaway climate change - not just global warming but destabilisation of the entire planet. A hotter time will change the seasons, the cycles of Nature, the rhythms of life, and the great procession of evolution.

The rhythm of the Great Heart of God has been drowned out by the cadence of hubris, greed, and violence... And we should ask why.

After reflection I have come to believe that the great Rabbi Abraham Heschel had it right - that the source of dissonance is ingratitude. "As civilisation advances," he wrote, "the sense of wonder almost necessarily declines... humankind will not perish for want of information; but only for want of appreciation. The beginning of our happiness lies in the understanding that life without wonder is not worth living. What we lack is not a will to believe but a will to wonder."

Heschel, here, connects appreciation with the sense of wonder and awe. The problem as he defines it is simply that as a "mercenary of our will to power, the mind is trained to assail in order to plunder rather than to commune in order to love."

We were given the gift of paradise, and thought that we could improve it - on our terms. We thought we could reduce the great mystery of life to a series of solvable problems each contained in an academic box. We thought that we could rid the world of reverence and so exorcise mystery, irony and paradox. We thought that we might change the cadence of Creation and seize control of the great symphony of life with no adverse consequence.

I wish it was practical to type out the rest of the article (it is not available in electronic form on the Resurgence website). Orr goes on to identify a few of the reasons gratitude comes hard. For one, nearly half a trillion dollars is spent each year on advertising "to cultivate ingratitude otherwise known as the seven deadly sings." The result, Orr says, is a "cult of entitlement." For another, "the pace of modern life leaves little time to be grateful or awed by much of anything." But Orr also identifies deeper reasons, including, most profoundly, that to acknowledge something as a gift requires us to acknowledge a giver. "And herein is the irony of gratitude. The illusion of independence is a kind of servitude while gratitude - the acknowledgment of interdependence - sets us free." Orr concludes:

Gratitude changes the rhythm. It restores the cycle of giver and receiver, extending our awareness back in time to ancient obligations and forward to the far horizon of the future and to lives that we are obliged to honor and protect. Gratitude requires mindfulness, not just smartness. It requires a perspective beyond self. Gratitude is at once an art and a science, and both require practice.

Seriously. Last time I'll say it. You should check out Resurgence.