Six Favourite Books on Gratitude
Looking for a book on gratitude? Here are six of my favourites!
1) Thanks!: How Practicing Gratitude Can Make You Happier by Robert Emmons.
This book discusses the science of gratitude. Quotes below.
" Ingratitude leads inevitably to a confining, restricting, and “shrinking” sense of self. Emotions such as anger, resentment, envy, and bitterness tend to undermine happy social relations. But the virtue of gratitude is not only a firewall of protection against such corruption of relationships; it also contributes positively to friendship and civility, because it is both benevolent (wishing the benefactor well) and just (giving the benefactor his due). In gratitude, we show our respect for others by recognizing their good intentions in helping us. A grateful outlook can even dominate the life of an entire culture, as can be seen in certain Eastern cultures where individuals view themselves as recipients of endless ancestrally bestowed blessings.
Perceive grace and you will naturally feel grateful…the problem, though, is that for many of us a grace-filled world-view is difficult to sustain. The human mind contains mental tools that appear to work against the tendency to perceive grace. We are forgetful. We take things for granted. We have high expectations. We assume that we are totally responsible for all the good that comes our way….The grateful person senses that much goodness happens quite independently of his actions or even in spite of himself.
In daily studies of emotional experience, when people report feeling grateful, thankful, and appreciative, they also feel more loving, forgiving, joyful, and enthusiastic. These deep affections appear to be formed through the discipline of gratitude.
There is the short-term feeling of gratitude, but also the long-term disposition of gratefulness…research shows that grateful people experience higher levels of positive emotions such as joy, enthusiasm, love, happiness, and optimism, and that the practise of gratitude as a discipline protects a person from the destructive impulses of envy, resentment, greed, and bitterness."
2) Gratefulness, The Heart of Prayer: An Approach to Life in Fullness by David Steindl-Rast.
This book addressed some of the spiritual intangibles of gratitude and the connection between heart and grace. Quotes below.
“Gratefulness is full aliveness, and that very aliveness is summed up in the symbol of the heart. All of my past history, all of my future possibilities, this heartbeat in the present moment holds all of it together.
When the Bible tells how God creates us human beings by breathing life into us, this intimate communion with God is seen as the core of our being human. We are alive with God’s own life. The heart, the center of our aliveness, is then also the focal point of our communion with God. The heart is where we meet God. But meeting God is prayer. And so we know one more thing about the heart: it is our meeting place with God in prayer.
[In prayerfulness we practice recollection: concentration and wonderment]. As I express my gratitude, I become more deeply aware of it. And the greater my awareness, the greater my need to express it. What happens here is a spiralling ascent, a process of growth in ever expanding circles around a steady center, a movement leading ever more deeply into gratefulness."
3) The Music of Silence: A Sacred Journey through the Hours of the Day, also by David Steindl-Rast
This book is a wonderful meditation on time and gratitude. Quotes below.
“The rule of St. Benedict—the “trellis” (for rule is canon in Greek), the latticework that has supported Western monastic life for 1,500 years—reminds monks that they stand in the presence of angel choirs whenever they chant. And they sing like the angels, who are said to be calling one another, answering one another in never-ending praise. That is also an expression of spiritual life as a whole, which is, in its essence, a life of love, of listening and responding to God and to one another. Love is not a solo act.
One of the reasons we feel so ill at ease in our daily lives is that we are either ruminating about the past, or worrying ahead into the future, and thus we are not present in the here and now, which is where our real selves reside. When we feel we are not real, we are like T. S. Eliot’s “hollow men.” Chant calls us out of chronological time, in which “now” can never be located, and into the eternal now, which is not really found in time.
If we envision time as a line that leads from the future into the past, then the past is continuously eating up the future without the least remnant. As long as we think of “now” as a very short stretch of time, nothing prevents us from cutting that stretch in half, and half again. Because chronological time can always be further subdivided, there is no “now” on our clocks, no “still center” to be found in clock time. To think of time in this way is not just to play with words; it’s a mental experiment we can do to bring home to ourselves that, in knowing what now means, we are experiencing something that transcends time: eternity. Eternity is not a long, long time. Eternity is the opposite of time: It is no time.
Obedience is not constraint, it is loving listening, and readiness to respond. This loving response to the call of a given moment frees us from the treadmill of clock time and opens a door into the now.
Chant teaches us something else about living in the present. From a pragmatic point of view, chant is a useless activity, it doesn’t accomplish anything. We are so geared to what is useful that we forget the meaningful, what gives our life joy and depth and value. To listen to the music or to sing a chant is to do something that has no practical purpose; it is just celebration and praise; it is just tasting of the joy and beauty of life, the glory of God. Listening to it, even in the midst of a very purposeful day, reminds us to add the other dimension to our experience, the dimension of meaning, that makes it all worthwhile.”
I enjoy this chant Jesu dulcis memoria. You can read the history here.
4) One Thousand Gifts: A Dare to Live Fully Right Where You Are by Ann Voskamp
This book celebrates intentional gratitude. Capturing gratitude through a list and/or photos of a thousand gifts. Quotes below.
“Jesus counts thanksgiving as integral in a faith that saves. We only enter into the full life if our faith gives thanks. Because how else do we accept His free gift of salvation if not with thanksgiving? Thanksgiving is the evidence of our acceptance of whatever He gives. Thanksgiving is the manifestation of our Yes! to His grace. Thanksgiving is inherent to a true salvation experience; thanksgiving is necessary to live the well, whole, fullest life.
Thanks is what multiplies the joy and makes any life large, and I hunger for it.
Could I write a list of a thousand things I love?...I grab a scrap paper out of the ash-woven basket at the end of the counter, one with a child’s drawing of St. Patrick, I think, headed to Ireland because he’s in a boat and those really do look like shamrocks on his sleeve—and I flip it over. Across the backside, on a whim, a dare, I scratch it down: Gift List. I begin the list. Not of gifts I want but of gifts I already have.
1. Morning shadows across the old floors
2. Jam piled high on the toast
3. Cry of blue jay from high in the spruce.
That is the beginning and I smile.”
5) The Grumble Free Year by Tricia Goyer.
This one is new to me. I found this quick read from Tricia Goyer (about the ups and downs of living grumble free during a crazy year) to be inspirational and motivational. I love how she ties it all in to trust in God, his goodness and timing. Quotes below.
“Our thoughts are just thoughts, not facts. They’re just a story we’re telling ourselves. It took me a minute to process that. My grumbles were just a story--a negative story--about how my life was working at the moment. In an effort to survive, my mind was pointing out all the “dangers” of this new life. My mind was attempting to keep me safe, but I didn’t have to make the negative story my story. The thing was, it would take a conscious effort to choose differently.”
6) The Scriptures
And, of course, the scriptures say it best with the simple admonition to "live in thanksgiving daily for the many mercies and blessings which He [God] doth bestow upon you." (Alma 34:38)
