The Power of Gratitude

the first value that i want to introduce is the value of gratitude gratitude is a preeminent spiritual value and gratitude has a central place in the teachings of all religions i'm not an expert in comparative religion by any means but i do dabble in the literature of many many diverse religions and you find very often in the writings of all religions the specific understanding of the need for a human being to be grateful to be thankful to express gratitude and to express thankfulness to each other to other human beings and to god being grateful to god is a central principle certainly of judaism a jew who prays faithfully three times a day or on certain days of the year four or even five times always includes in his prayers a prayer of gratitude gratitude for god to god when a faithful jew eats a meal and recites the grace the blessings after the meal blessing number two is no delica i want to be thankful to you god so gratitude certainly is a principal value core value in judaism what psychology has discovered and again in the past decade not much longer maybe a decade and a half because you can look in the literature and you see that these studies begin to appear in 1992 1994 not earlier is it a fascinating finding and the finding is that there is a correlation between gratitude and mental health that people who are capable of feeling gratitude and of expressing gratitude on many many indicators of mental health and even of physical health show a dramatic sometimes startling superiority over people whose capability for being grateful is numb let me just summarize some of the recent research from a book published in 2004 called the psychology of gratitude it's edited by eminence e-m-m-o-n-s was a very prominent researcher and writer on this topic the psychology of gratitude and mccullough m-c c-u-l-l-o-u-g-h the psychology of gratitude oxford university press and this is just a paragraph which summarizes the findings of this 700-page textbook gratitude has been shown to predict pro-social behavior a greater sense of coherence meaning the perception of one's life as comprehensible manageable and meaningful greater perceived communal strengths lower materialism lower depression and strengthened social bonds and friendship so gratitude has besides its obvious spiritual and religious significance gratitude psychology is teaching us from a scientific point of view has what we would call in hebrew slash yiddish tactless it really works it really helps it helps change people it helps make people better able to cope with the general difficulties of life as well as with a range of specific challenges if you consult that book you will see a section on gratitude and aging and the dynamic interrelationship between the two how as people get old to the extent that they are successfully coping with the vicissitudes of aging they develop a deeper and stronger sense of gratitude and are able to express their gratitude it's one of the secrets of successful aging getting in touch with being thankful but there's also a chapter there which i recommend especially to those of you who work in a hospital setting and that is gratitude in the physician-patient relationship the importance of assisting people who are suffering and who are challenged who are feeling angry or sad depressed etc of realizing what they have to be grateful for how they can get in touch with gratitude gratitude in the moments gratitude for the that for the health treatment that they're getting for the services they're getting gratitude for the bonds and social bonds that they have gratitude for past experiences extremely important i have before me a actually it's the third issue of a new journal which just began in the beginning of 2009. it's an apa american psychological association official journal peer reviewed etc etc highest standards and every time i look at the title of the journal i i remember you know 40 years ago when i was in graduate school i couldn't imagine a journal like this being taken seriously but the journal is called the journal of psychology of religion and spirituality it's the official journal of division 36 psychology of religion the american psychological association and the particular volume i have here is volume 1 number 3 august 2009. there are two fascinating studies in that journey in this journal because they work on the assumption that i just tried to enunciate here the assumption that gratitude is a positive factor in positive mental health that gratitude is important if one wants to help a person proceed in a mentally healthy fashion with the challenges of life then help him feel or her feel and express gratitude well how do you do that there's two there's two articles here which i want to focus on one is entitled quote can prayer increase gratitude that's the title question mark but of course the research studies which are extensive studies thousands of subjects is that yes if you encourage people to pray many people are accustomed to praying and pray all the time but need to learn how to pray in a meaningful way neither had to pray we would say in hebrew to pray with kavanagh to pray with real intention not just to mumble the words but they report a range of experiments a range of research studies in which individuals in a variety of conditions healthy ill variety of ethnic groups variety of socio-cultural statuses encourage them to pray to pray to the god they know to pray to a higher being to pray to whatever they're ready to pray to you will find that with prayer comes gratitude that prayer can foster gratitude the experience of prayer sincere prayer and i'm not talking about a long in our prayer few words moses who's accompanying me up here at the uh the podium i feel a little humbled by his presence when moses prayed for miriam he maybe is the first uh physician on record to pray for a patient he prayed for his sister miriam who was suffering from leprosy his prayer was five words in hebrew el na refa na la five words he prayed and said god please heal her that's four words in english the shortest prayer on record and possibly the most effective but with that prayer comes a sense of gratitude and the article reports fascinating scenes of individuals who in the midst of prayer suddenly felt gratefulness thankfulness well up within them and with it tears and emotions and memories long lost memories of individuals in their past or incidents in their lives for which they never really felt and expressed gratitude and it comes out with prayer so this is one article in this particular journal and it suggests that one way to cultivate and enrich one's sense of gratitude is through an introspective experience prayer for going into oneself contemplation meditation etc going vertically deep into oneself this same journal maybe 100 pages later not quite there's another article which has the word gratitude in its title and that is the social environment of the church and feelings of gratitude toward god the study the study here third floor south interstitial it's hard to hear code red without feeling quite emotional anxious and let's face it gratitude that we're not in that position this particular article again titled social environment of the church and feelings of gratitude toward god obviously is based on research done with christian religious communities but the lesson holds true in all religious communities and those of us who participate in the range of jewish communities know that it's true for jews as well and this takes an entirely different approach this particular group of psychologists recognizes like the first group the importance of gratitude but suggests a different way of fostering gratitude a different way of cultivating it a different way of evoking gratitude and it's not through prayer it's not by going deep it's not vertical it's not by going inward quite the contrary it's horizontal it's by reaching out to other people and the articles prove something which any of us we're affiliated with any house of worship knows that part of the spiritual power part of the religious impact of attending a synagogue service or church or temple or mosque service is that you're there with other human beings you're not alone in our tradition you're with a mignon you're with a group of others it could be a small group of others just ten or it could be a large group of others ten thousand but you're part of a group and you have relationships with other people in that group some the relationship is purely within the prayer service you sing along with them you stand next to them as each of you separately communicates with god who communes with god but you're there with another individual but we all know that the relationships we form in the synagogue don't stay in the synagogue they extend beyond the synagogue we meet afterwards we attend a coalition of kidus we inquire after each other's health we visit each other when one or the other is sick we attend each other's joyous occasions as well as moments of sadness and grief so there's a a star a horizontal aspect not just going in with prayer it's moving out to other individuals and that's why it's the social environment of the church or the house of worship that stimulates feelings of gratitude toward god