Thanksgiving in a Time of Loss

This Thanksgiving is, for me and my family, a time of mourning. On Tuesday of this week we celebrated the life of my father, who passed away a few short weeks ago. I sit now in my childhood home and find myself expecting to see my father at every turn.

It's easy to fall into melancholy memories, to sit there in the aching remembrance of a childhood whose pains are long forgotten but whose joys are as clear as they're out of reach--joys bound up with my father, who is now gone. It's easy, in such moments, to lose touch with the spirit of gratitude that we celebrate today.

The experience of loss is part of the human condition, and it is often felt most keenly during the holidays, when established rituals are pregnant with memories. On the first holiday after a loved one has passed away, the empty spaces left behind are especially potent: the place where she sat, the role he played in preparing the meal, the story she always told, the distinctive resonance of his laughter.

You look with habitual expectation and find yourself jolted by absence. With time, of course, the habits fade. The absence no longer hits with such a shock. But it remains an empty space.  And as we grow older, there will, inevitably, be more such spaces.  

This year my family confronts my father's absence--my father who was always the attentive host, the one who raised the glass in our welcoming "Skål," who always made sure everyone had what they needed. How can we help but feel his absence, so fresh and vivid, as we sit down to the Thanksgiving feast? What does it mean for this holiday, whose purpose is to offer thanks, to turn our eyes upward in a spirit of gratitude, to thank God for the gifts of life?

Part of the answer is offered afresh every day by my children. When I find myself falling into the past, longing for what is gone, I'm grateful to my children who exist so wholly in the joys of the present that I'm forced to live there too. And I'm thankful for my own childhood and the family that made it possible--imperfect as all human families are imperfect, but defined by the kind of love that casts a long shadow into the future. 

Were it not for that love, I wouldn't feel the ache of loss. Those who are gone move us to mourn because, when they were with us, we were present with them, attending to them, loving them. And so loss must recall love, and love must flow out again into this place where we find ourselves now, this place where joy waits to be tasted along with the feast. We honor love by loving. We revere treasured memories by make new ones. 

Another part of the answer hit me on Monday night as I was sitting at the table with friends and family who had arrived in town for the memorial service. We drank wine from the wine rack my father had filled (with his impeccable taste), and we told stories and laughed (and cried) and ate together late into the evening. We were living and present to each other, thankful for who my father was and for each other. We were alive and living our lives at the table together. 

And I thought about the final notes of the violin piece I'd composed for my father's service. A "double stop"--two notes of a chord played together. And the thing that struck me is this: When you play two sustained notes of a chord on a violin, the interaction of the sound waves audibly produces the third note in the chord. If you listen carefully for it you can actually hear it. It's there, sounding clearly above the other two. 

And of course my father was there, in just that way, as we gathered at the table. And as we gather for our feast tonight, he'll be there again, sounding clear and true.

Cosmic Gratitude and Ways of Seeing

In the recent post outlining my overall “philosophy of religion,” I offered the following comment: “With respect to the origins of the cosmos, we have to decide whether to adopt a stance of gratitude—the kind of stance that makes sense if reality is the product of loving agency.”

My point here was to given an example of how ways of seeing the world are implicated in the practical choices we need to make in our lives. Among many examples I might have chosen, I considered the act of being grateful for the existence of the cosmos and everything in it. We might call this "cosmic gratitude." I chose this example because I wanted to be clear that some practical decisions are more matters of inner stance than outward action. While being grateful might express itself in concrete gestures (saying “Thank you,” for example), it is first and foremost an internal attitude that one adopts.

And adopting this attitude of cosmic gratitude clearly makes sense if the whole of our reality is seen as the product of loving agency. It might not make sense given certain other ways of seeing--in fact, I'm pretty sure it doesn't. But since I hadn’t thought about the issue deeply enough to decide whether adopting this attitude makes sense only if reality is the product of loving agency, I deliberately chose not to say that.

At this point, as a philosophy teacher, I can’t resist pausing to offer a brief mini-lecture about the kind of basic logic you're likely to learn in a critical thinking course. (And I don't mean to be condescending in doing this. Even those of us who know this stuff quite well can sometimes benefit from taking the time, every once in awhile, to walk through it deliberately, like a novice). A proposition of the form, “If x, then y,” is called a conditional. the statement that appears in place of "x" is often called the antecedent of the conditional, while the statement in the "y" place is called the consequent. Unlike conjunctions ("x and y") and disjunctions ("x or y"), switching the placement of x and y makes a difference.

When you do switch the antecendent and the consequent, what you get (“If y, then x”) is called the converse of the conditional, and it is logically distinct from the original conditional—in other words, they’re saying different things, which means that formally speaking the truth value of a conditional and its converse needn’t be the same.

Unfortunately, things get a bit messy because conditional statements can be expressed in a variety of ways. For example, “If x, then y” is also sometimes worded as “x only if y.” Even though the "if" here appears before the statement in the "y" place, the "only" has a logical function such that "y" is still the consequent. But if someone says, “x if y,” they mean “If y, then x.” In other words, “x if y” is the converse of  "if x, then y," and so is the converse of “x only if y.”

To sum it up: "x if y" is the converse of "x only if y." The two are not logically equivalent. Contrast the following: (a) “A thank you letter is polite if you receive a birthday gift”; (b) “A thank you letter is polite only if you receive a birthday gift.” Based on the conventions of etiquette in the US, (a) is true while (b) is false. Likewise, we need to clearly distinguish “Cosmic gratitude makes sense if reality is the product of loving agency” from “Cosmic gratitude makes sense only if reality is the product of loving agency.” It was my intention in the earlier post to say the former (a view which I am confident is true), not the latter (since I haven't considered it carefully enough to say for sure what I think of it).

But it is quite easy on a quick reading of someone’s argument to confuse a conditional statement with its converse--especially when the positioning of the "antecendent" and "consequent" are out of their usual order, as was the case in my earlier post. And, judging by recurring comments on my previous post, many readers apparently did just that. For example, SecularDad asked, “Why can’t someone have this sense of gratitude without belief in a loving agency?” Burk said, “The fact is that we can feel gratitude in any case.. it is all about us, not about the cosmos. We are here, and have feelings, so we can feel gratitude, and do so. The idea that we need a conjured ‘father’ or other totem on the other end, whose existence is, as above, hypothetical at best and utilitiarian in origin ... that is simply absurd.” More cautiously, Bernard said, “I, like Burk, feel hugely grateful for my own existence without having any conception of that beyond the physical, and readily accept it doesn’t work this way for you.”

But even if these comments were sparked by a misreading of my original remark, they raise an interesting set of questions. After all, this cosmic gratitude--this sense of gratitude for one’s existence and for the world in all its mystery and wonder—is a common human experience that seems to cut across religious and philosophical differences. And there is at least some reason to think that this sort of gratitude is healthy. People who cultivate cosmic gratitude (as opposed to very selective gratitude) are more likely to be at peace with themselves and their lives, even if things aren’t perfect.

Given the ubiquity and value of this attitude, it is worth digging deeper into the conditions for its coherence. What I said explicitly in my earlier post was that such cosmic gratitude is coherent under the traditional theistic view that existence is a gift of love. Given this way of seeing things, cosmic gratitude “makes sense.” Implicitly, of course, my remark suggested that there might be ways of seeing things where such gratitude wouldn’t make sense. (While I’ll resist another critical thinking mini-lecture, I will point out that this latter suggestion emerges based on principles of “conversational implication”: In ordinary conversation, one doesn’t typically point out that A is true under condition B if one thinks A is true under ALL conditions—and so, while one cannot make this assumption in formal logic, when someone asserts a conditional it is usually fair in conversation to impute to them the belief that the “consequent” of the conditional isn’t true under all conditions.)

In any event, I think it is pretty clear that there are ways of seeing reality such that, given those ways of seeing, an attitude of cosmic gratitude makes little sense. Here's an example: Suppose you see the cosmos and everything in it as the product of a supremely powerful Devil who created the universe solely for the sake of having targets for his malevolence. Everything exists purely so that this supreme Devil can achieve his goal of a universe teeming with endless conscious torment of the worst conceivable kind. And this Devil, being supremely powerful, will not fail to achieve this goal: In the end, every conscious being will be brought to a state of eternal suffering so horrific that it would have been better not to have existed at all. Those who at present enjoy their lives, who experience love and happiness, are afforded this glimpse of goodness only for the sake of making possible some special sort of torment later: perhaps the torment of having precious goods decisively and permanently ripped away, or the anguish of witnessing the crushing ruin of loved ones, etc. Ultimate affliction, we might suppose, is so much worse when there are points of contrast, so that endless, hopeless yearning for lost love and joy can be an additional source of anguish in the Devil’s arsenal.

And yes, I am fully aware of just how close this worldview I’m describing is to views actually embraced by some Christians—specifically, strict double-predestination Calvinists, as well as those who see eternal hell as the fate of all those who die without having explicitly accepted Jesus as Lord and Savior. In fact, I think an important objection to such versions of Christianity might be built around what I am saying in this post. But I won't develop that argument now.

My point here is this: If you see the joys of this life as fleeting moments in a whole existence definitively stripped of worth by neverending, soul-crushing anguish--and if, furthermore, you see the purpose of existence to be the realization of such states of torment in every conscious being--well, it hardly makes sense to adopt a stance of cosmic gratitude for existence. If, by contrast, you think that the sufferings of this life, no matter how serious, are but fleeting moments in a whole existence definitively imbued with worth by neverending, soul-uplifitng goods--and if, furthermore, you see the purpose of existence to be the bestowal of such goods on every conscious being--well, it clearly makes sense to adopt a stance of cosmic gratitude.

But these extremes are hardly the only two options. There are numerous alternatives, some of which make cosmic gratitude coherent, others of which don't.  The interesting question raised by the comments on my previous post is whether you need to see the cosmos as having loving agency at its root--whether, in other words, you need to see the cosmos as a benevolent creation--in order for cosmic gratitude to be a coherent response to existence.

In addressing this question, I first want to consider a line of argument that won't work. Specifically, the argument that of course gratitude makes sense without adopting this condition, because we exist and have feelings, and so can feel gratitude, and may do so. This won't work because the question is not whether we can feel cosmic gratitude no matter how we see the universe. The question is whether cosmic gratitude makes sense no matter how we see the universe. It is a question of coherence--over whether every way of seeing the universe can coherently undergird a grateful attitude.

I've already argued that seeing the universe as wholly the product of malevolent agency can't be coherently conjoined with cosmic gratitude. But few see the world in such a hideous way (although it may prove to be more common than one might think, once one digs below the surface of certain theistic beliefs). The more interesting question is whether gratitude makes sense given a naturalistic worldview. And here, rather than try to give an answer of my own, I want to consider something Bart Ehrman has to say on the matter.

For those unfamiliar with Ehrman, he is a religious studies scholar who has authored a number of highly successful popularizations of work in biblical studies. In one of those works, God's Problem, Ehrman devotes several pages to reflecting on his own deconversion from evangelical Christianity--a process that occurred in stages, and that took him from a "Bible-believing" Christian intent on saving souls from damnation, to being a progressive Christian, to being an agnostic who views the Bible as wholly a human artifact. In discussing this deconversion process, he reflects on some of its more painful aspects. One of those aspects has to do with gratitude. Here is what he says:

Another aspect of the pain I felt when I eventually became an agnostic...involves another deeply rooted attitude that I have and simply can't get rid of, although in this case, it's an attitude that I don't really want to get rid of. And it's something I never would have expected to be a problem when I was still a believer. The problem is this: I have such a fantastic life that I feel an overwhelming sense of gratitude for it; I am fortunate beyond words. But I don't have anyone to express my gratitude to. This is a void deep inside me, a void of wanting someone to thank, and I don't see any plausible way of filling it. 

Now let me stress here that I'm not at all sure that Ehrman is talking here about cosmic gratitude, that is, the sense of gratitude for existence as such--both one's own and the existence of the universe. It seems to be more a case of gratitude for the kind of existence that he has come to enjoy. We might call this "specific gratitude." And he rightly notes, a bit later on, that this species of gratitude is problematic. As Ehrman puts it, "If I have food because God has given it to me, then don't others lack food because God has chosen not to give it to them? By saying grace, wasn't I in fact charging God with negligence, or favoritism?" 

These concerns are, of course, bound up with the problem of evil--which is Ehrman's focus in God's Problem. And it seems to me that the theist's only escape from these concerns is to deny that God is directly responsible for the precise distribution of blessings and challenges in this life. If this is right, then gratitude for specific blessings may not make sense within a coherent theistic framework.

But my concern here is with cosmic gratitude, and with the question of whether seeing the world as the product of loving agency is a necessary condition for such gratitude to make sense. And here, a different aspect of Ehrman's discussion becomes relevant. Specifically, gratitude is a feeling with what might be called a "double-intentionality." There's what we're grateful for, but there's also who we're grateful to. Is gratitude possible without the latter? And can the object of the latter be anything other than an agent who meant well in providing what one is grateful for?

If not, then while an atheist or agnostic might be happy for existence, or take delight in it, or have feelings that are in some sense analogous to gratitude, they couldn't be genuinely grateful (at least not coherently so). And that would mean that anyone who was genuinely grateful for existence itself would thereby be operating, at least implicitly, as if there were someone to be grateful to: an agency responsible for existence itself.

But this conclusion follows only if we give negative answers to the questions I just posed (Is gratitude possible without the latter? And can the object of the latter be anything other than an agent?). So--what do you think of these two questions?

Gratitude and Grace

A few weeks ago I wrote in this blog about my daughter’s “Ariel sighting” in a splat of bird poop, and I used the incident as a chance to reflect on the significance (or lack thereof) of Virgin Mary sightings. The job of preparing a sermon on gratitude, which I’ll be delivering this Sunday in my role as chair of the Stewardship Committee, has given me the opportunity to think again about such “miraculous” sightings—but this time in a way that connects to the question of what it means to live one’s life in a spirit of gratitude. While the full sermon is too long to reproduce here (and probably too long to read on Sunday morning—but, well, they’ll live), I wanted to share here a core section of that sermon. The excerpt appears below:

Now, I don’t want to debate the plausibility of interpreting such images as signs from God. That’s not my objective here this morning. What I want to think about instead is what happens to our relationship with God when we become obsessed with finding the stamp of the divine in such things as toasted cheese sandwiches, or in chocolate drippings (as happened in California a few years ago), or in a swirl of marble on a chapel wall (as happened not long ago in Ghana).

And I don’t want to limit my attention to this fixation on Virgin Mary sightings and the like—because something very similar is going on with what’s come to be called “Intelligent Design” or “ID” theory. ID theorists are determined to find evidence of the divine in biological structures that are supposedly “irreducibly complex” and hence can’t be explained in Darwinian terms. And when they find something that they think fits the bill, they hold it up and declare, “Must be God!” These ID theorists are really doing the same kind of thing as those obsessed with Virgin Mary sightings: They’re scouring the world, sifting through the ocean of human experience, looking for miracles.

As if life itself weren’t a miracle. As if every breath I take isn’t a miracle. As if the astonishing fact of existence weren’t a miracle.

The poet and scholar, Frederick Turner, puts the point this way: “It is easy to deceive ourselves that something strange, something supernatural, is happening, as we know well from accounts of flying saucer enthusiasts, superstitious cultists, and ghost hunters. But perhaps our greater danger, our greater credulity, lies in deceiving ourselves that something strange and marvelous is not happening.”

In fact, I think that the first sort of deception contributes to the second. When we begin to fool ourselves into thinking that this unusual chocolate dripping or that complex molecule is a special revelation of God, we magnify the risk of losing sight of the miraculous character of what’s always there, all around us.

As Kahlil Gibran puts it in The Prophet,

…if you would know God be not therefore a solver of
riddles.

Rather, look about you and you shall see Him playing with
your children.

And look into space; you shall see Him walking in
the clouds, outstretching His arms in the lightning and descending
rain.

You shall see Him smiling in flowers, then rising and waving
His hands in trees.

In this passage, Gibran isn’t trying to prove God’s existence by arguing that clouds and lightning, flowers and trees, can’t be explained in scientific terms. Rather, he’s saying that if we open ourselves up to the fullness of life and reality all around us, we’ll experience the divine moving in it all.

The quest to find God in distinctive images burned onto toasted cheese, or in biochemical systems that can’t be explained in evolutionary terms—such a quest is a distraction from the religious life as Gibran describes it. When we get caught up in such a quest, we become “solvers of riddles,” rather than children of God living in the light of God’s grace. We become so focused on finding fireworks in the night sky that we lose sight of the sky itself and the beauty of the scattered stars.

And so we forget to be grateful for the miracle of existence that surrounds us and fills us up at every moment. The constancy of the sky leads us to ignore it, and we attach our hopes and joys to the ephemeral bursts of colored sparks that splash for just a moment across our vision and are gone. The sky’s very constancy, which should magnify our gratitude, leads us instead to take it for granted.

Part of what it means to live in a spirit of gratitude is to resist this tendency. It means seeing and taking joy in the deep and abiding miracles: life; our capacity to love and to be present in the world; the spray of stars across a blue-black sky.

But there’s something else as well. As the mystic philosopher Simone Weil points out in today’s meditation, the universe is filled to the brim with everything we have ever thought to wish for. But because I don’t possess this thing at this moment, I curse the universe. I define the good as my good, and all the wonders of the universe therefore count as nothing unless I hold them in my clutches.

But I don’t need to make the universe as small as I am. I can, instead, expand myself so that my sense of self sweeps outward across the heavens, and every good that exists can be for me a source of joy. When I do that I’ve left the confines of my narrow ego and chosen instead to abide in the dwelling place of the living God (Psalm 84).

In this place, gratitude and generosity are part of the same whole. To be grateful is to feel the grace of God flowing through you. To be generous is to let it flow, unimpeded. In this place, authentic gratitude has no contact with its dark pretender, that burden of indebtedness Kahlil Gibran warns against when he tells us to “assume no weight of gratitude, lest you lay a yoke upon yourself and upon him who gives.” In the dwelling place of God, generosity is a gift that makes no demands on the receiver. Gratitude is a joyous response, not the burden of reciprocal obligation. The grateful are generous, not out of duty, but because possessiveness would amount to leaving the dwelling place of God behind. It would mean a return to that lonely little universe, as tiny as a single ego.

My sermon goes on to exemplify what it means to live a human life in this spiritual space of gratitude and generosity by (no surprise here) looking at the life of Friedrich Schleiermacher. More specifically, I look at the words he spoke at the graveside of his youngest son, his beloved Nathaniel. But a discussion of that heart-wrenching sermon will have to be the subject of a later post.