Attitude of Gratitude

This time of year, the former U.S. History teacher in me can’t help but come out. Since the first seven years of my teaching career were at a parochial school, I had the opportunity to teach about how important faith was in the lives of many of our country’s great leaders.

Abraham Lincoln is one of my all time favorite examples. In July or 1863, not long after the battle of Gettysburg had turned the civil war in the Union’s favor, Lincoln called for a national day of Thanksgiving, Praise and Prayer;

"I invite the people of the United States to assemble on that occasion in their customary places of worship, and in the forms approved by their own consciences, render homage due the Divine Majesty, for the wonderful things He has done in the Nation’s behalf,

and invoke the influence of His Holy Spirit to subdue the anger, which has produced, and so long sustained a needless and cruel rebellion, to change the hearts of the insurgents,

to guide the counsels of the Government with wisdom adequate to so great a national emergency,

and to visit with tender care and consolation throughout the length and breadth of our land all those who, through vicissitudes of marches, voyages, battles and sieges, have been brought to suffer in mind, body and estate,

and finally to lead the whole nation, through the paths of repentance and submission to the Divine Will, back to the perfect enjoyment of Union and fraternal peace."

Lincoln was the President who made Thanksgiving an National Holiday. He didn’t ask us to watch a parade, eat ourselves silly, fall asleep during a football game and the next day shop-till-we-drop. He asked us to pray.

First to thank God for all we had. Especially during tough times, we can thank God for all He’s given us. A bumper crop, good neighbors, decent school, freedom of speech, freedom to worship, freedom from fear and freedom from want. Loving family and cherished friends.

Then that God would work in the hearts of our enemies. Why do people think that the only way to get anything accomplished is with a suicide bomber’s terrorist attack? I can’t understand why terrorists don’t use non-violent means to accomplish their goals. It worked wonders for Ghandi and Martin Luther King, these men changed the world. Perhaps it’s not change or disagreement that motivates them, maybe it’s just evil, anger and hatred. All the more reason for us to pray for them, that there might be peace on earth.

Lincoln wanted Americans in the North to pray that the Holy Spirit would turn the hearts of the Southern rebells. We can pray for all our rivals and adversaries, not just Muslim terrorists. The acquaintance who irritates you, the bully at work or school, your ex. Pray that God would soften their hearts and make them more loving, more patient, more kind.

Then Lincoln asked Americans to pray for their government, for their leaders.

Next he wanted Americans to pray for those who have lost family members and property during the Civil War. We were full of prayers for the victims and families of 911 for the first several weeks afterward, but how long has it been since we prayed for their peace and recovery? It’s easy to forget when we get on with our own lives. What about families who have lost their jobs, homes, or farms in the recent recession? What about the family of the mother and child killed on 141 outside of Mapleton this month, or for the families of the immigrants trapped in the railroad car discovered in Denison this fall?

Finally Lincoln asked Americans to pray that God would direct us all as a Nation, to repent of our sin and selfishness and to follow His will, so that we would be able to know real peace and real prosperity serving Him.

In October of 1863 Lincoln issued another proclamation, for a Thanksgiving holiday the last Thursday in November. Thanksgiving came about because Lincoln believed that we should give thanks even in the midst of war and suffering. This is some of what he said in that proclamation;

"The year that is drawing toward its close has been filled with the blessings of fruitful fields and healthful skies. To these bounties, which are so constantly enjoyed that we are prone to forget the source from which they come, others have been added which are of so extraordinary a nature that they can not fail to penetrate and soften even the heart which is habitually insensible to the ever-watchful providence of Almighty God."

To which I say, "Amen"

Midwestern Boy

When I was in junior high, I was trying to figure out who I was. Isn’t that what every kid is doing in junior high? I looked around at my friends and all their lives seemed more exciting than mine did.

Lots of kids were dealing with their parents’ divorces; some kids had lots of money or knew someone famous. Everybody else seemed to have a more interesting life than mine. Mine was just too boring, too "Leave it to Beaver." I had both parents, they worked hard to make sure we had clothes and food and they loved us. We lived in a ranch house in the suburbs where my brother and I had paper routes. Boring-ville.

When I was in junior high in Phoenix, the Black kids had a culture; the Mexican kids had a heritage and a culture and great food. American Indian kids had all that and cool pow-wows and costumes and stuff. The Italian kids had great cooking and style.

I felt left out. I thought that White Anglo Saxon Protestant lower-middle class suburbia was boring. If only we were rich or poor or members of some oppressed minority group. Drama, passion, contrast. Could you imagine? Envying hardship. Other kids turned to teenaged angst, punk rock and pot. I turned east.

Hardly anyone in Phoenix is from Phoenix. My parents had left the Detroit area in 1968. Now there’s drama, it just took years and college classes about recent history for me to see it. They wanted a better life for us. Better weather, better economic conditions, and away from all the racial tension and political unrest that Detroit had come to symbolize.

What it meant for me was that I could say I was (sort of) from the Midwest. Suddenly I had a sense of identity. I had a culture, even if it was kind of bland. The summers we spent in Michigan I was introduced to such foreign, exotic and romantic things as twilight, casseroles home made pies, fishing, and Jell-O salads.

Then I stumbled upon a radio show that was all about my newly chosen ethnicity. Garrison Keillor's "A Prairie Home Companion" on National Public Radio. I’d savor it the way I imagine Eastern Europeans under Soviet oppression savored the Voice or Democracy on Radio Free Europe.

Keillor's self-effacing humor focused on what’s funny about the mundane. Like how the front-row for Lutherans is five or six rows back. Or his "Young Lutheran’s Guide to the Orchestra:"

"Many Lutherans start out playing clarinets in marching band and think of it as a pretty good instrument and kind of sociable…But the symphonic clarinet is different: clever, sarcastic, kind of snooty. It's a nice small town instrument that went to college and after that you can't get a simple answer out of them. It _is_ a French instrument, you know. Ever wonder why there are no French Lutherans? Probably the wine wasn't good enough for them."

I thought this was great stuff, especially since I played the clarinet in junior high and hated it. All the cool kids played trumpet or drums. But my older brother had played clarinet, so I played clarinet. Keillor made it okay, I was humble, it’s good to be humble, learn to laugh at yourself.

Who knew? I went to Concordia College in Nebraska because of their great art program, because they offered me a scholarship, and because it was far away from home.

Junior year of high school on the plane to Journalism Workshop at Ball State University in Indiana, kids from all over the country assumed I was from Chicago. When they found out I was from Phoenix, they’d look at me funny. Too heavy, too short, too pale, too not-blonde.

Then there was the one about the Art Major and the farmer’s daughter. Just that he married her, no joke. So, that’s how I became a Midwesterner, I married into it. Kids at Boyer Valley are always asking why anyone would want to choose to live in rural Iowa. They want nothing more then to get the heck out of their one-horse town.

I tell them that I lived in the second largest city in America for the better part of a decade and I’d much rather live in a village than a megalopolis. Sure, we still have crime, and drugs, and poverty, but I never had dinner with my state representative in LA, I never knew my postmaster by name. I never talked to the LA County Sheriff about being a fellow church youth counselor.

This is a good place to live and a good place to be from. You can say, ‘I’m an Iowan’ and not be ashamed, it may not seem as exotic as being an Ethiopian, but why be jealous of hardship? Why not appreciate your roots and how blessed you are to be from the heartland?

Don't look down

It’s a hard lesson to learn, but cheerleaders learn it every year, usually in the searing heat and glare of the late summer sun at camp, long before the school year and the football season begin. The lesson is, Don’t look down. Put another way, attitude determines altitude.

Pilots know this. If you raise the aircraft’s nose up, the plane flies up. Cheerleaders have to learn this too; where your eyes go, your body tends to follow. If you look straight ahead at the crowd, you’ll keep your balance, look down, even for an instant, and your body will begin to lean.

Cheer is not the only sport in which this principle applies. A basketball shooter doesn’t watch the ball, to make a basket, they have to focus on the hoop. Golfers can try to follow their ball after they swing, but at that instant they follow through, they’d better be concentrating on where they want the ball to go if they want to avoid a wicked slice.

A few weeks ago PBS host Allan Alda talked to University of Arizona scientists about this on his show, Scientific American. It seems that whether it’s a tennis serve or a volleyball serve or a hunter after a pheasant, the principal is the same- where you look, there you go. Don’t look at the ball, look at where you want it to go, don’t look at the bird, aim at where you expect it to be the moment your shell reaches the same point in space.

If you don’t want to fall, don’t look down. Principles are things that can usually be applied in other areas of life. That’s why sports are good for kids, they learn valuable life lessons without even realizing it- a spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down.

Seems there have even been studies that suggest that while you’re walking down the street, if you tend to constantly be looking at the ground, your mood sours, whereas if you look up more, you’ll naturally become more upbeat, less tense, even happy. One theory is that when you look ahead or up, more light can make it into your eyes. In the fall and winter when days get short and clouds hide the sun or people stay inside all day, some people begin to suffer symptoms of what doctors call seasonal affective disorder (SAD). So looking up can literally, physiologically keep you “up.”

Let’s use our “don’t look down” principle as an analogy for other things.

Take people. If we expect the worse, they probably won’t disappoint us. If we’re critical of them or defensive toward them, they’ll treat us as we’ve treated them. If we look for even one good thing in them and appreciate it, we may even bring out the best in them.

Take politics. If a candidate focuses only on what’s wrong about his opponent, he or she only turns off the voter. America is fundamentally an optimistic place, voters want to know what the candidate’s hope and plans and qualifications are. Ever notice how when one person is looking up, everyone else starts looking up? We want to see what they see. “What is that? What are they looking at?” It’s compulsive. That’s leadership.

Take work. If you focus on how hard it is or how unpleasant, it only makes it more unpleasant. Time drags on when you watch the clock. If you focus on a goal or your accomplishments, it’s much easier.

Take business. If you focus on your obstacles, expenses or irate customers, you’re dooming yourself. If you focus on trying to build relationships, and on trying to provide your customers with what they want and need, you’re bound to succeed.

Take religion. There’s Law and Gospel, right? The Law shows us that this world is messed up because people are basically selfish and short sighted. What does that get us? It’s meant to humble us and make us realize that we need God. Great, but if we never stop focusing on how bad we are and how bad everybody is, we’ll never get on with living. The Gospel is the good news that God loves us even though we’re selfish and short-sighted. It shows us that He wants to have a relationship with us and He wants to help us be selfless and broaden our vision.

Take any problem we have or all of life for that matter. Take society in general. If we insist on always being critical or negative, where does that get us. Nowhere, stuck, stagnant, digging downward. But if we look forward or look up, guess what- we’ll at least stand firm and tall, at best, we’ll start moving forward.

Many a cheerleader who has the bruises to prove that “don’t look down” is one of the most important lessons anyone can ever learn.