This week, I created some opportunities for people to celebrate spiritual ecology as part of World Interfaith Harmony Week. Friends, family, acquaintances, students, colleagues, and people I’d never met gathered in our “circle of rectangles” (via Zoom) from across the U.S. Each day we had a theme: contemplative writing, making beauty from (with, and in) nature, and gratitude.
One astute soul shared on the last day of this offering, saying that they prefer the word “blessings” in lieu of gratitude. I get it. While I am a long-time practitioner of and adherent to “the gratefulness movement,” the word itself can lose a bit of steam with the repetition over time.
Another person told the circle how they have a spontaneous and situational practice of gratitude out in the community. When a moment arises, they quietly offer a word of thanks for the person they are just about to visit, or whose presence they have just left. This led me to something:
Random Acts of Gratitude!
Years ago, I had a long spell during which I wrote about random acts of kindness. I defined the term, offered ideas for how to perform them, and discussed their value in the world.
Now I feel a wave of “random acts of gratitude” coming to shore within me. These would be unplanned moments to offer praise, thanks, and blessings to someone. That person might be present or absent. They might hear and receive the expression of gratitude or never know it occurred. Others might bear witness to the expression or not. And these offerings would not just be verbal or written words. They might be an offer of a hug to a stranger who told the postal clerk that her father just died. They might be a carrying of heavy groceries to the elderly person’s car, a smile, a held door, a photo of an exquisite flower bud just beginning to separate its petals, the eyes-closed inhalation of petrichor or a stick of incense, a joining of palms at the heart and a silent bow of honoring…
These don’t look on the surface that different from random acts of kindness. But random acts of gratitude dig a bit deeper. They come from the feeling of interconnection with all beings, a conviction that we are held and sustained by the unseen Beloved in the morning air, the insight that the shock of red feathers on the pileated woodpecker’s head is divinity itself.
This week inspired me to begin a new gratefulness-blessing-gratitude-thankfulness practice: RAOG. I’m indebted to those who were present with me as we rooted ourselves in the joy, peace, and wellbeing of interfaith unity one inspired idea after another. The moon, volcanic rock, woods behind the house, flowers at the feet, ocean air, salute to a beloved who had passed away, spirals of chrysanthemum, bedded down deer - and more - who were offered into our sacred space this week will shine the light for me as I go back out into the world to serve and love and savor.
