Season 2 Podcast 68 Thanksgiving Part I Gratitude

GratitudeWhen I want a synonym, I always turn to J.I. Rodale’s The Synonym Finder. The book offers the following synonyms for gratitude: gratefulness, thankfulness, sense of obligation, feeling of obligedness, beholdenness, recognition, acknowledgment, thanksgiving, giving thanks, praise, benediction, thank-offering, requital, grace, a lively sense of favors to come.  But of course words branch out from there: For example grateful has the following synonyms: deeply appreciative of benefits received, thankful, indebted to, obliged, obligated, beholden, under obligation, mindful, impressed, pleasant to the mind or sense, gladsome, agreeable, gratifying, genial, acceptable, satisfactory, satisfying, welcome, delightful, charming, restful, comfortable, interesting, lovely, heartfelt, rapturous, thrilling, felicitous, ecstatic, heavenly, delicious, sweet, luscious, delectable, savory, palatable, toothsome, nice, refreshing, invigorating. When defining a concept such as gratitude, a word or synonym may identify one attribute; however, to understand the concept fully, you must first identify all the attributes.  Each attribute will have its own list of synonyms.A prayer at dinner I often heard as a child contained the following words, “For what we are about to receive make us truly thankful.”  What does it mean to be truly thankful?To fully understand the concept, one must know all the attributes and all the synonyms. Of course, if you really want to know the concept, then explore the antonyms of each attribute as well.A concept like thanksgiving, for example, can only be understood if we understand ourselves. For example, we cannot be truly thankful for something unless we know what that something is; therefore, we must explain how we connect with the object of our gratitude.  Consider the following connections we may have to things we are thankful for. I shall list only four. Perhaps you can list more: the five senses, the mind, the heart, and the spirit. The five senses, of course, contain the eyes, ears, fingers, mouth, and nose which represent sight, sound, touch, taste, and smell.  The mind contains logic, inductive and deductive reason, the scientific method, pure reason and so on.  The heart contains feelings, desires, and passions.  And the spirit contains the supernatural, the eternal, the metaphysical, the other worldly.  Imbalance occurs when one connection dominates at the expense of the others.  For example, the seven deadly sins—pride, envy, gluttony, lust, anger, greed, and sloth focus entirely on the natural man. True gratitude cannot exist in such a poisonous environment.  Christians have traditionally taught they must be offset by the seven heavenly virtues: humility, kindness, abstinence, chastity, patience, liberality, and diligence.  In modern times we see other imbalances. Today reliance upon the temporal without considering the spiritual has moved us toward atheism, pessimism, and nihilism. Reliance upon the heart without the mind has moved us toward socialism. Reliance upon the spirit without the mind has moved us toward fanaticism. God has so created us that by using all the sensory perceptions—the physical senses, the mind, the heart, and the spirit—we can maintain a balance, what the Greeks called the Golden Mean.