Gratitude: Its Essential Presence - Lin Wilder

Gratitude:: It's Essential Presence

Gratitude concept. Gratitude: its essential presence

Lord, we thank you for this heat!

“Lord, thank you for this soaking perspiration each time we go outside, so wet that we need to change clothes down to our skin!” At Monday’s 6 am morning Mass at St. Matthew’s Catholic Church, Father Paul didn’t say that second comment, just the first. The second is mine, voicing the complaint that comes far too readily to my lips.

The priest reminds us of gratitude: its essential presence in our hearts. Our obligation as Christians to view everything as gift. Father Paul’s message was especially evocative for me not just because of the prolonged heat and drought but the arduous, at times grueling, work of revising my newest book.

But first some background.

Father Paul’s homily relates to the constant bellyaching of our adopted ancestors: the Israelites in the desert. Although we’re tempted to, we know better than judge these people who have been wandering in the desert for thirty days, with everything they have, kids, livestock, elderly and all possessions.

Just like me, when suffering and sacrifice shows up, they forget the miracles the Lord has done. And kvetch that they’d been better off in Egypt, seduced by slavery to the world.

Here’s the reading from Monday’s Christian liturgy:

The children of Israel lamented, “Would that we had meat for food! We remember the fish we used to eat without cost in Egypt, and the cucumbers, the melons, the leeks, the onions, and the garlic. But now we are famished; we see nothing before us but this manna.” Manna was like coriander seed and had the color of resin. When they had gone about and gathered it up, the people would grind it between millstones or pound it in a mortar, then cook it in a pot and make it into loaves, which tasted like cakes made with oil. At night, when the dew fell upon the camp, the manna also fell.

When Moses heard the people, family after family, crying at the entrance of their tents, so that the LORD became very angry, he was grieved. “Why do you treat your servant so badly?” Moses asked the LORD. “Why are you so displeased with me that you burden me with all this people? Was it I who conceived all this people? Or was it I who gave them birth, that you tell me to carry them at my bosom, like a foster father carrying an infant, to the land you have promised under oath to their fathers? Where can I get meat to give to all this people? For they are crying to me, ‘Give us meat for our food.’ I cannot carry all this people by myself, for they are too heavy for me. If this is the way you will deal with me, then please do me the favor of killing me at once, so that I need no longer face this distress.”

It’s impossible to read this

and be unaffected. We identify with both the constant complaining of the Israelites and the impatience of Moses. That is, if we’re honest. We know that after forty days of eating a substance tasting like coriander seed, we would be wailing too. And Moses? His plea, ‘If this is the way you will deal with me then please do me the favor of killing me at once…’

Is there any of us who have not thought that? When we feel we’ve no more to give. Done. Just end it.

Father Paul’s exhortion, “Thank you Lord for this heat” fits this San Antonio summer.

After an absolutely miraculous spring–it rained just about every day–sometime around mid-May, summer hit. The heat seems to be intensify as the days wear on. And on.

And there’s been no rain. Last week on the way home from grocery shopping the car registered 108 degrees. We know drought often signifies God’s wrath. And we’re surely deserving of it.

But ours is a God of mercy, so I’ve begin asking Elijah to intercede.

“Please help us.”

Just so, I’ve been praising criticism.

Do I mean it?
In praise of criticism? A wholehearted, unadulterated YES! Honest feedback is imperative-even when it draws blood. It’s different from asking someone whether they like your new haircut. Most likely, if the haircut is awful and you are asking, they understand you’re merely asking for a reminder that it will grow back. But with a story created solely out of the ethos, we simply cannot be objective about what we have written, it is not possible. I wrote this after reading a blistering review of my first novel:

Eight novels later, I return to say, “Thank you Lord for criticism.” Gratitude, its essential presence especially when we must say thank you for this gift with gritted teeth.

Ive lost count of the

number of times my new novel has been revised. One would think, it gets easier, it doesn’t. After all, isn’t each new book the same?

Write, ask for feedback, rewrite, ask for critique and rewrite?

Yes.

But I forget. Or at least supress the memory enough to do it again.

For me, it still takes time to staunch the hemorrhage. That’s what it feels like when reading editorial comments like, “plot implausible,” “not up to your usual standard,” and the like. But always. Always, once the bleeding stops and the capacity to think returns, I slog through yet another revision, once done and I reread, I’m stunned at the improvement in the story.

It’s a law, I think.

Gratitude: Its Essential Presence

Or at least a rule: humiliation brings grace. Just like the Gospel for Wednesday of this week:

And behold, a Canaanite woman of that district came and called out, “Have pity on me, Lord, Son of David! My daughter is tormented by a demon.” But he did not say a word in answer to her. His disciples came and asked him, “Send her away, for she keeps calling out after us.” He said in reply, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.” But the woman came and did him homage, saying, “Lord, help me.” He said in reply, “It is not right to take the food of the children and throw it to the dogs.” She said, “Please, Lord, for even the dogs eat the scraps that fall from the table of their masters.” Then Jesus said to her in reply, “O woman, great is your faith! Let it be done for you as you wish.” And her daughter was healed from that hour.

Our Lord was sent to the Chosen ones,

the Jews. This woman is one of only two non-Jews who ask and receive. We know the other well, for we quote him at each Mass, “Lord I am not worthy…” the centurion. About whom Jesus is amazed, “I’ve not seen faith like this man’s in Jerusalem!”

And this Caananite woman.

Although the disciples try to send her away, and the Lord doesn’t answer, and when he does, is insulting, she persists. She comes and does him homage. “Lord, help me.” She absorbs the insult-” Lord, even the dogs eat scraps.”

Persistence.

Patience.

Trust.

The result? “O woman, great is your faith”

“Blessed are you, O Lord, the God of our ancestors,

praiseworthy and exalted above all forever;…

All you powers, bless the Lord;

praise and exalt him above all forever.

Sun and moon, bless the Lord;

praise and exalt him above all forever.

Stars of heaven, bless the Lord;

praise and exalt him above all forever.