| Happy Sunday, folks. Gratitude is all the rage. I've written in the past about the benefits of giving thanks for what you have, for writing down in gratitude journals. I've done it. It does help. There are actual benefits to it. But is there another level of thanks we can give? A major deficit in the modern human is the lack of formal thanks-giving. Real thanks, I mean. Not "oh, thanks for holding the door open for me." Not the "thank you" we dole out to baristas and servers. Those thanks are also important and gracious, and they oil the machinery of polite society, but they're not what I'm talking about. We have plenty of those and very little of the ones I'm concerned with. Consider how things were for most of human history. We had literal rituals designed around giving express thanks to the spirits animating the world around us, to the clouds for their rain, the sun for its rays, the animals for their meat and hides, the fire for its warmth. These are no small matter. Later, it got more personal. People would (and do) pray directly to an omniscient god. Often to ask for assistance in matters of life or death, to pray for loved ones faced with difficulty or disease, but also to give thanks and gratitude for their good fortune. Is there a secular way to do this? Do gratitude journals accomplish the same thing as giving thanks to God, Krishna, or the river spirit that consistently provides ample salmon to your tribe? I don't know. I suspect it's not the same to shoot gratitude out into an indifferent universe. But if a person doesn't believe in a higher power, what other option do they have? I'm opening it up to you. What do you think? Let me know in the comment section of Weekly LInk Love. | 