LEARNING THANKFULNESS

"[T]hankfulness must be learned and practiced... Thankfulness reaches beyond the gift to the giver. It arises from the life that it receives... The thankful are humble enough to receive something as a gift. The proud take only what is their due. They refuse to accept a gift... To thankful people everything comes as a gift, because they know that for them there is nothing that is earned... In thankfulness I gain a proper relationship to my past; the past becomes fruitful for the present... but to regain [it] completely regret must join thankfulness... [through memory]. Ingratitude begins with forgetting: forgetting is followed by indifference, indifference by dissatisfaction, dissatisfaction by doubt, and doubt by curse." - Dietrich Bonhoeffer

(Konspiration und Hoft 1940-45, ed. Jorgen Glenthoj, et al, 1996. From I Want to Live These Days With You, Westminster John Knox Press, 2005)