Gratitude & Grief | Jake Haber

As we gear up for Thanksgiving Week (and the holidays as a whole), we stop to create space for the variety of emotions that we may be feeling – grief right along with gratitude.

What if gratitude and grief are not so different & distinct? What if finding a connection between the two holds a key for a deeper spirituality and more authentic human experience?

 

Quotes:

 

C.S. Lewis:

“To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. To live fully is to accept the trade-off of safety for the unpredictable and unknowable nature of love and life.” 

 

Haruki Murakami:

“You should not strive to eliminate your pain but to feel it, give it meaning, and see it as part of your evolution.”

 

Rainer Maria Rilke:

“Let everything happen to you: beauty and terror. Just keep going. No feeling is final. Gratitude is being able to stand in that storm and recognize it as part of the whole tapestry of living.”

 

Joan Halifax:

“When we sit with the dying, we are invited into the heart of life itself. In grief, we find the seeds of gratitude—not for the pain, but for the reminder of how fleeting and precious life is.”

 

David Steindl-Rast:

“The root of joy is gratefulness… It is not joy that makes us grateful; it is gratitude that makes us joyful. Even in moments of pain or grief, gratitude allows us to stay connected to life’s deep and mysterious beauty.”

 

Anne Lamott:

“Gratitude begins in our hearts and then dovetails into behavior. It almost always makes you willing to be of service, which is where the joy resides. It means we allow ourselves to see the terrible beauty of the life we have—not the life we thought we’d have, but this one, full of pain, and yet still luminous.”

 

Mumford & Sons ("Not With Haste"):

“I will love with urgency but not with haste”