I love church seasons. I love the ebb and flow of plenty and fasting, special and ordinary. Ask your kids about the church seasons. What do they know about them? What is personally meaningful to you, to them? One thing I appreciate about my tradition is the tether to the liturgical seasons, without needing to be TIED to them. So, I’m adding another: Season of Thanks (topical, I know).
The next few Sundays, I’ll be sharing music that gives thanks as a way to support your own search for meaningful moments of thanksgiving. We’ll look a bit at Brené Brown’s work as it relates to the research of why we are grateful, we’ll look at what Christian writers and thinkers say about it from a faith perspective, and we’ll do some creative activities around being intentional in naming our gratitude.
This is not about being ‘positive no matter what’ or a ‘name your blessings’ sort of guide. I… am not very good at being positive, and I think many people like myself are tired of shallow statements telling us to “think positively” and everything will change. I’m not going to promise change, in part because I’m still resistant myself and I’m not sure if it will really change for me. But I am sure we want to try. And I am sure that many of us would say gratitude is a value we want to teach our children. What I am predicating this on, then, is that practice precedes belief and there’s no need for pretending here. We may still feel burned out by 2020 and that’s ok. This is also going to be experiential: we will talk about the WHYS after we talk about the WHATS and HOWS. So stay with me. I’m trying something a little different here this month.
All God’s Children Sing 