Gratitude as Spiritual Practice: A Meditation for Life after Fundamentalism
Or, on realizing that I’m happy for the first time…
Gratitude has long been a triggering word for me. A false sense of gratitude—one of stuffing painful feelings, of overspiritualizing the painful bullshit in the world as somehow a part of god’s plan—was regularly weaponized against me during my years in a high-control religious group.
In the years since I’ve left, I’ve healed so much—I came out of both the rainbow and broom closets, I’ve spent years in therapy, I’ve set lots of boundaries, I’ve learned a thousand tiny ways to express radical care to myself and others day in and day out, I’ve built new communities, and recently, I’ve been looking up and realizing more and more that my state of being is starting to shift from perpetually anxious to happy/okay (even despite bullshit in my life and the world).
And for the first time, gratitude makes sense.
This week, I sat on the beach with my nesting partner and inhaled the happiness of the moment and exhaled gratitude for this sacred moment. I do the same with other beloveds and friends, in all sorts of contexts, through all sorts of emotions, through all sorts of good and bad days and news cycles. Living out the community care of my wildest dreams—the stuff of forbidden prayers I lifted when I was locked down in fundamentalism.
I am happy because I am in community as I am—truly myself. Secure in love: so I express presence/joy/hope to that sense of beloved connectedness and community care. In a word, gratitude.
And if that’s not spiritual,1 not magickal,2 not divine,3 I don’t know what is.
In Wonder,
Kandi Zeller (she/her)
When I describe or experience any tool/practices as spiritual, I want to acknowledge that that is not everyone’s experience. Any practice/tool I share is meant for all, regardless of spiritual label (or lack of label) or whether you experience these tools as spiritual or as some other adjective(s). Labels, while helpful in describing our experiences, are ultimately insufficient, so I want to hold space for that tension here.
I love the definition of magick laid out in this article: “action taken to bring about internal transformation or external change.”
My understanding of how God expresses Godself is expansive. Basically, I conceive of spirituality as our experience with divine love and connection. But even that feels a little religious-y. Put another way, I believe spirituality is the place where we as individuals and communities connect with the “force of love that holds up the universe” (in words sometimes attributed to Julian of Norwich), whether we conceive of that love as divine or as the love shared between fellow humans/other creatures or some combination of both loves. It is the place within our bodies and our communities where we find love and connection with all who have come before and who will come after.
Synchronicity strikes again. I was just reflecting this morning on how transformational it has been to start intentionally practicing gratitude. Our little coven has "gratitude partners" - we send each other a short audio message each day expressing what we're grateful for. It is a little thing, a blip on the radar... but it has had profound effects on my psyche.