Gratifest 2024

The following message is from the Reverend Grayson Hiatt, associate director of Mere Christianity Forum, an organization. Rev. Hiatt shared this reflection during our Gratifest gathering on Thursday, November 21, 2024, at Daniel Chapel.

I appreciate the invitation from the organizers to speak here today, and I want to applaud each of you and your desire to seek for gratitude.

Today, I want to talk to you about the paradox of gratefulness that I am personally struggling with. As I take inventory of my life, all good things have a dark side. For instance, I’m thankful for my shoes – they look nice, they fit well, and I’ve been able to keep them relatively clean despite having kids, but they aren’t Jordan 8 Aquas and they’re made by a company that preys on the less fortunate and benefits from child labor. I am thankful for my last meal, satiating me, being tasty, but I am reminded of all those with an empty belly.

Next week, we celebrate a holiday of paradox: we are beneficiaries of wellbeing that came at the expense of indigenous peoples’ suffering yet we are encouraged to slow down and be thankful for what we have. Though keeping them in tension may be hard, both things can be true at the same time. We can be both grateful and critical, but I would encourage us that our fault-finding does not lead us to cynicism but instead to the hope of a brighter tomorrow.

Walt Witman said, “I contain multitudes.” Part of being human is carrying multitudes within us, including multitudes of paradoxical light and dark, and for this, I am grateful. I am grateful to be human, to stand in the beauty of light, overwhelmed with gratitude, while also being critical of the darkness as an extension of my gratitude, to hold close the hope for a better tomorrow.

I don’t know where you are. Perhaps you are overwhelmed by finals, tests, and grades, you are fearful of spending holidays with a toxic family you cannot trust, or maybe you carry the weight of a contentious election cycle and fear what it holds for your future, but know that you are not alone in these tensions, and, despite the masks we wear in public, we are all carrying a multitude of paradoxes under the surface. This is what it means to be human, and as hard as it is in this season, I am grateful to be human, I am grateful for my fellow humans, and I am grateful that we are not alone.

-Rev. Grayson