The Subversive Activism of Gratitude

Photo by Dayne Topkin on Unsplash

These are days when gratitude might not come easy for you.

It's tempting to scan the horizon each morning and to let our gaze rest and fix solely on the things that burden us; on the sorrow-bringers and the treachery they manufacture, on the terror we are daily surrounded by because of their seemingly boundless capacity to injure and attack.

We can easily allow the perpetual, urgent storm they manufacture to obscure the light from view, to fool us into believing that the night has permanently fallen on our best days.

But this would be a mistake.

It would be playing right into their hands. To lose heart now would be to consent fully to them and their predatory designs—and so we cannot.

For this reason, it is a life-sustaining, subversively hopeful act to take our eyes off those who traffic in fear and to let ourselves dwell on those people who resist the despair, those who wield light in this black season, those who still walk defiantly in love.

Today, I am dwelling on them.

Today, I am giving thanks for the fighters, the lovers, the healers, the caregivers, the damn-givers.

I am giving thanks for the ordinary activists who are living intentionally, joyfully, and beautifully in days when such things are most difficult; for the people who will not genuflect to inhumanity simply because it has power and demands that they kneel.

I am stopping to let my mind hole up inside gratitude for a while: to find rest in the knowledge that good people still inhabit this place; that a massive, disparate swath of humanity still wakes up everyday looking to do no harm, seeking to be decent, striving to get life right.

I am giving thanks for the rabble-rousers and the good troublemakers who serve as a thorn in the side of the sorrow-bringers; those who confound and exasperate and pushback when human dignity is assailed.

I shout a grateful amen for those who boldly raise a middle finger to the hateful parade as it passes by; the people who will not be bullied into giving up on love for our neighbor as the greatest endeavor of this life.

Today I give thanks for those speaking up for the first time,
for those speaking up for the ten thousandth time,
for those losing longtime friends to defend a stranger's worth,
for those leaving churches where love no longer lives,
for those calling out racism across the dinner table,
for those calling out bigotry in their workplaces,
for those calling their public servants to actually serve the public,
for those calling bullshit on a political party that demonizes Muslims and brown people,
for those who see a stranger's children as worthy of protection as their own,
for those giving up sleep and comfort and cheap compromise, so that someone else might be shielded from suffering.

In days when gratitude does not come easy, it is an ever greater priority to nurture it.

Today, I'm thankful for every human being committed to equality, diversity, compassion, love, and justice who will not relent even when the fight seems a losing one.

And come to think of it, maybe seeing this bold, defiant army coming in love on behalf of others every single day, should make gratitude come easy. It should make thankfulness our default setting.

Maybe this truth, is what the sorrow-bringers most want to hide from us.

Maybe our gratitude is the activism they are truly terrified of.