The feedback loop for a sermon is pretty short. Someone in coffee hour will say, “That’s just what I needed to hear.” Someone in the receiving line will say, “You were kind of all over the place, less ideas next time.” And if I’m lucky, someone will stop me and say, “You know, this is what your topic brings up for me…” And if I’m luckier still, they will write out their thoughts for me to give them the attention they deserve at a later time.
So after service last week, when we were in line for coffee, one of our long-time members shared his thoughts on gratitude. And he was kind enough to let me spend more time with them later. His reflection considered the question, “To whom are we actually thankful?”
It’s a timely question. It’s Thanksgiving tomorrow, which is still a month and a half earlier than I am used to. So I would have thought that, with so many Unitarian Universalists turning their thoughts toward gratitude in the months of October and November, we would have some deeper considerations for the topic of the season. Something more theological.
But more often than not, when I look for reflections and readings for our common deepening on gratitude, I am left a little wanting. Instead of depth I am greeted by “platitudes of gratitude.” Let us be thankful for XYZ! For the sun and the rain and the apple seed.1 But then what?
What I mean is, what is the deeper significance of our gratitude? How does it connect us to one another, to the deep and the Ultimate in our lives? Whether we understand the abundance of our lives to be God-given or not–where does it lead us?
Here’s a story for our starting place. One of my mentors, the Rev. Kelly Dignan, told a story about gratitude at our colleague’s ordination ceremony.
When the Unitarian Universalists in the United States were discerning their shift from the Seven Principles to Six Values, they considered gratitude as one of those guiding values.
Initially.
But among that discerning group, there was a young person. Someone with a keen and fresh point of view. Gratitude, they agreed, is certainly beautiful. But it is often solitary. An inward feeling. But generosity, that is an outward-facing practice. It’s a relational practice.
And so, that group of people chose to centre generosity as a value.2
Generosity, as Rev. Kelly put it, is the outward expression of the inward feeling of gratitude. One longs to give rise to the other. As within, so without.
That young person’s fresh perspective made all the difference. Their perspective, not yet calcified by so many years of habit, could observe what others’ couldn’t. So did this story. It offered me an important truth, and to the rest of us gathered in that sanctuary. It offered us a perspective on gratitude that could lead somewhere. Lead to a depth we could find in other stories.
Stories are powerful that way. They are powerful because, each on their own, they are incomplete. They always leave something out. Leave something to the imagination. And, they are remade with each telling, and by each teller. Every time they come to life, they come into our world a little differently. Catch the light at a different angle. In this way, they pull our lives into something greater. Deeper. More Ultimate than our own individual smallness. In this way, they are food for theology.
Ministers, especially emerging ones, spend ample time poking at theology. Circling and searching for words to wrap our arms around something more Ultimate than ourselves. Theologies of hospitality, of Love, of power, of generosity. Rev. Kelly and I, like many Pagans, are both lovers of a good, old story, of myths and folktales. So when I turned to her for help in finding a theology of generosity, we turned together toward story.
I am still looking for some story of generosity older and deeper than I am. One that has passed through the fire of life after life. I am still looking for that story that touches both my own, and others. Which shows an inner gratitude incarnated in worldly generosity.
So, for the time being, we heard two younger stories today. They do nicely. Every old story was young once, anyway. So as we heard in our time for all ages,3 once upon a time there was a neighbourhood grandma named Omu. She was a generous elder, I imagine because of a long life full of gifts. One where time and time again she had stared scarcity in its hungry face and laughed. She could laugh because her mother and grandmothers and neighbourhood elders taught her time and time again that we can always find enough to share. Abundance is never far away.
And one day she was making a pot of soup which everyone in the neighbourhood wanted to try. And try it they did, until there was no soup left for Omu’s dinner. That’s the hard thing about generosity, you see. Sometimes we give and give because we have been given so much in life. Because life has taught us there’s always enough to go around. So we hope the people who receive our gifts pay them forward. And that this gift may make its way back to us.
But as you and I both know, that doesn’t always happen.
At the end of that long day of soup making and giving, Omu stared at the bottom of an empty pot. But she was knocked back from the edge of despair by a knock on her door. And in came the police officer with a salad, the mayor with a chicken, the baker with dessert, and even the little boy with a little gift.4 Her generosity did come back.
I imagine that she had a secret ingredient in her pot of soup. Gratitude. And that ingredient made her soup so filling that no one could keep their gratitude to themselves. So they came back to Omu’s door bearing gifts. Gifts enough for dinner and leftovers to spare.
This is a story I’ve used before in worship. And like many a good story, it shows me something new each time. This time, it was the ending that caught my attention. The neighbours came back. And if any one of them had come back on their own, there might have been enough food to tide them and Omu over until breakfast. But together, they brought a whole feast.
Let’s have another story. It’s the one Jean just shared for our reading.5 And even thought it’s a story about someone’s real life, it still has enough holes and unknowns to invite our imaginations in.
In a time not too long ago, but a continent away, there was a young person named Becky. And she and her partners were incredibly lucky. In a crowded city, they had found just the right place to live. A place that wasn’t perfect, but full of unexpected treasures. We can imagine what each of their luck was like before. Maybe one of them came from a family blessed by better fortune than they had earned. Maybe one of them had worse luck in their life than they deserved. And let’s imagine that one of them grew up with luck that was just fine. Not too great, but not too bad either.
But one thing was for sure. They had unbelievably good luck together. And good luck changes you when it sticks around. You get used to it, expecting it. It might not be around every corner, but it’s there enough to depend on. And as so often happens, because luck was living with them, gratitude moved in, too.
And so it was with these three young people. They had plenty of luck, and plenty of gratitude for it. Until one day, luck moved out. Maybe not forever, maybe not for long. But luck moved out just long enough for mishap to move in.
One morning, the three of them awoke to find mishap camped out in their garage. Someone had broken in, and left a mess overnight. But as the three took stock, they found little missing. Everything was there. Except for two sweaters and half a tent. Someone was having rougher luck than them. Perhaps a lifetime, perhaps half-of-one, forsaken by luck and befriended by mishap.
The three could have called their parents. Or called the police. But instead they took the other half of the tent to the curb. What were they going to do with half a tent anyway? They had more than enough to be grateful for. And the next morning, their gratitude offering was gone. Paid forward. We hope with them it went where it needed to go most. We hope that someone paid that generosity forward. That’s what their gratitude had become. Generosity.
These stories of gratitude have holes for our imaginations to seep in. Whether I’ve read them for the first time or the tenth, I read something different each time. With every reading, I restory my past. I see myself alongside them. I see where gratitude takes root in my life and bears the fruit of generosity. Where I have seen what was within, and aligned what was outside of me with it.
By restorying my past, I can restory my future, and align it with our principles. I can look to the gratitude I feel in my life and see where it comes from. From the blessings and life-lessons that have affirmed my own worth and dignity. I can see that in other people’s gratitude as well. And I certainly imagine it in the lives of Omu and Becky. I can imagine it in your lives, too.
But when I let that gratitude flow out into the world, let it escape the confines of my singular being, then it has the chance to touch others. Others with as much worth and dignity as me, or the next person. Then, it reveals a sign of our interdependence. I can see myself – see ourselves – in a cycle of generosity. The generosity of others, the gifts of this world, inspire gratitude in us. Gratitude becomes a seed inside us. It takes root, growing out beyond us to touch the world. And with careful tending, it ripens into generosity. A gift we have paid forward.
Turn now to your own inward feelings of gratitude. Where have they come from? Were they freely given? Were they hard-won? Imagine how they take root in your lives. Imagine them reaching out beyond the confines of your singular beings. Out to the far corners of your lives. Out into the buildings and streets and wild spaces you move through. Out into the lives you touch with your gifts. With your generosity.
And now, the cycle begins anew.
1. From a song variously known as the Johnny Appleseed Prayer, Blessing, or Grace, my spouse learned this working at a YMCA camp as a teenager.
2. Kelly Dignan, "Call to Generosity," April 18, 2026.
3. Oge Mora, Thank You, Omu! (Little, Brown and Company: 2018).
4. Mora, Thank You, Omu!, 17.
5. Becky Brooks, "Blessed Curses, Cursed Blessings," Braver/Wiser, Unitarian Universalist Association, August 9, 2017 https://www.uua.org/braverwiser/blessed-curses-cursed-blessings