A Church Talk From Last Thanksgiving

A talk I gave at the Berkeley Ward for the Sunday before Thanksgiving last year. Forgive the seasonal dissonance. I figure someone might find this helpful:

Brothers and Sisters,

My name is CJ Swenson, and I’m a PhD student at the Graduate Theological Union. I’ve been living and studying in Berkeley for a few months, but my wife and 21-month-old daughter live in Utah and I fly back every other week or so. So if you haven’t seen much of me, it’s not because I don’t want to be here. This building is amazing: it has a trophy case and a kitchen with a gas range and what looks like a bomb shelter downstairs. And this ward is amazing too. I feel the Spirit here in a way that I sometimes didn’t in Utah. I wish I could be here more.

It’s almost Thanksgiving, so it makes sense that I’d be asked to talk about gratitude. To begin ,I’ll give a quote from King Benjamin. In Mosiah 2, he says this:

I say unto you that if ye should serve him who has created you from the beginning, and is preserving you from day to day, by lending you breath, that ye may live and move and do according to your own will, and even supporting you from one moment to another—I say, if ye should serve him with all your whole souls yet ye would be unprofitable servants.

I can’t pay back God. Every time I breathe in, every time the ground underneath my feet holds me up, every time I’m able to eat or beat my heart or think or feel or just exist, I am being sustained by a God who is investing in me. I don’t need to pay him back. That’s not what he asks. In fact, paying him back is both inappropriate and impossible. First off, trying to become independent from God is the definition of sin, and second, I simply am dependent on Him. I am sustained by Him. He is the ground beneath my feet and the air in my lungs and the blood pumping through my veins and arteries and capillaries. In him I live and breathe and have my being. 

Brothers and Sisters, I invite you to try to stop your heart from beating. Go on, try. I promise nothing bad will happen.Notice that you can’t. Your heart is smarter than you. I wouldn’t be good at beating my own heart, and I’m glad it does a better job than I would. I’m grateful for it. In His Sermon on the Mount, Jesus all but dared his disciples to add a cubit to their height. Brothers and Sisters, I invite you to grow a foot taller. It’s not a cubit, so I’m cutting you a little slack. No? Well, I’m grateful for the height I have. Or I try to be. I’m grateful like birds might be for their nests or flowers might be for the ways they can’t help outshining even Solomon’s glory. 

And once more: I invite you to–just for a moment–pause and pay attention to your own thoughts. Just watch. Just listen. Do they come in words or pictures? Some combination of the two? Something else entirely? See if you can figure out where one thought starts and another stops. See if you can figure out where they come from and where they go. We don’t have all the time in the world, but I bet that if you really paid attention, you’d notice that even your own thoughts are like the Spirit that bloweth where it listeth. You hear the sound but don’t know where it’s coming from and where it’s going. Brothers and Sisters, I’m grateful for my thoughts.

And even when I fall apart, I’ve learned to be grateful for it. From the pieces, something much better can piece itself together. Right now, I often feel like the world is falling apart. Some of you might be falling apart right now. But that’s OK. Even if you can’t hold yourself together, I bear testimony that you don’t have to. Something is holding you: your breath, your body, your blood, yes, but also the One who lends you your breath and the One who crafted your body and the One who willingly gave his blood and his body for you. I’m grateful for Jesus like I’m grateful for the ground when I fall down. He descended below all things. Sometimes the world feels like an endless ocean where there’s no up and no down and no direction and, like Peter, it feels like you’re sinking and lost and flailing. But Jesus found the bottom. In a world that feels like an endless storm, he walks on water. And he invites us to try too.

So I suppose I’ll follow the hymn book’s advice and count my blessings:

I’m grateful for my body and for the miracles it does for me every day.

I’m grateful for my mind and for the things it can’t understand about itself. 
 
I’m grateful for this city and for how its weirdness has taught me to honor my own.

I’m grateful for the mentors and friends here who see the worth I sometimes forget I have.

I’m grateful for my wife who saw me and sees me and believes in me.

I’m grateful for my daughter, who has taught me to see the world the way it was when I was her age.

I’m grateful for you, all of you, who are caring about something sacred and bright in a dark world just by the fact that you are here.

I’m grateful for all the good, true and beautiful things in my life I never earned and will never deserve.

And I’m grateful for the One who gives them to me anyway.

And I say these things in His name, even Jesus Christ.

Amen.