Feel that warm, positive energy in the air? It’s gratitude, a practice that is growing in popularity.
In November as Thanksgiving approached, folks around Clark County practiced gratitude in myriad ways.
• Vancouver Community Library displayed a gratitude tree for patrons to write reasons for their gratitude.
• The city of Ridgefield’s Wine and Chocolate Gratitude Festival included a gratitude graffiti project.
• During a monthlong gratitude challenge, Cape Horn-Skye Elementary School fifth-graders in Washougal wrote holiday letters to troops and kept thankful journals.
• St. Anne’s Episcopal Church in Washougal hosted an interfaith Thanksgiving Eve service offering prayers and songs from various traditions focused on gratitude.
• A Thanksgiving Day yoga class at Rushing Water Yoga in Camas included a meditation on gratitude.
But gratitude can be practiced all year, says Michele McKeag Larsen, founder of Vancouver nonprofit The Joy Team. In December, The Joy Team unveiled a gratitude billboard across the street from Providence Park, the stadium where the Portland Timbers play.
The billboard reads: “Gratitude is a leading cause of good things. Really good things.”
“Some people say the more things you’re grateful for, the more good things come your way,” said Larsen, the woman responsible for placing the billboard at the high-profile intersection of Southwest 18th and Taylor in Northwest Portland. “I personally think it’s true.”
40 weeks of gratitude
Mackay Sposito, an engineering and construction management firm based in Vancouver, commemorated its 40th anniversary in 2015 by focusing on giving back to the community in a campaign called “40 years of leadership, 80 acts of gratitude.”
Every week for 40 weeks, Mackay Sposito offered two gifts, said Damon Webster, director of corporate stewardship. The first was an internal gift to its more than 100 employees. The second was an external gift to the community, consisting of nonprofit projects focused on education, children or veterans.
The community projects included an American Red Cross blood drive, donating to Camas VFW Post 4278 and collecting a carload of school supplies for the Evergreen School District Foundation.
“The more you start looking, the more you see the need. We discovered the needs are vast,” said Webster. “We heard stories of kids choosing a backpack filled with school supplies and their faces just lighting up.”
Books about gratitude
• “Gratitude” by Oliver Sacks (2015; essays Sacks wrote in the last few months of his life).
• “The Gratitude Diaries: How a Year Looking on the Bright Side Can Transform Your Life” by Janice Kaplan (2015).
• “Gratitude Works! A Twenty-One-Day Program for Creating Emotional Prosperity” by Robert A. Emmons (2013).
• “The Thankful Heart: How Deliberate Gratitude Can Change Every Texture of Our Lives” by Richard and Linda Eyre (2014).
Children’s books about gratitude
• “Bear Says Thanks” by Karma Wilson (2012).
• “Look and Be Grateful” by Tomie dePaola (2015).
• “Thank You and Good Night” by Patrick McDonnell (2015).
Source: Fort Vancouver Regional Library
McKay Sposito employees are comfortable, Webster said.
“It’s so easy to take that for granted. It’s good to remember that so many in our community don’t have their basic needs met. It feels good to be able to meet some of those needs.”
Eunice Schroeder, an interfaith spiritual counselor in Vancouver, said she does not use the word “gratitude.”
“The word that I use is ‘gratefulness.’ I think of it as a shift in focus or a reframing of a perspective or assumption,” said Schroeder, who organizes the annual New Year’s Day labyrinth walk at First Presbyterian Church.
Clients often ask her why there is so much evil in the world, she said.
“I have an equally important — and I hope valid — question that is not asked as often,” Schroeder said. “Why is there so much good in the world? I am so grateful for all the goodness, mercy, compassion, forgiveness and love that is alive and well.”
Schroeder says asking that question often helps people focus on reasons they are grateful.
Paul Cheek, owner of Rushing Water Yoga in Camas, has led a Thanksgiving Day meditation on gratitude for 13 years.
“I use simple phrases to be thankful for everything that’s supported them in life,” Cheek said. “For instance: ‘With gratitude, I remember the care and labor of a thousand generations of ancestors who came before me.’ Eventually, we bring to mind someone they care about. We do a joy meditation at the end. Gratitude and joy are completely related.”
Cheek ends the meditation by reading from author Melody Beattie: “Gratitude unlocks the fullness of life. It turns what we have into enough, and more. It turns denial into acceptance, chaos to order, confusion to clarity. It can turn a meal into a feast, a house into a home, a stranger into a friend. Gratitude makes sense of our past, brings peace for today and creates a vision for tomorrow.”
Focusing on being grateful has helped Cheek as he is recovering from a traumatic brain injury he sustained two years ago.
“When you have a life-changing event, gratitude turns problems into gifts,” he said. “Practicing gratitude helps make sense of life that sustains me. It’s a daily practice: I’m thankful for this breath. For this nice walk in the rain.”
Cheek affirms his gratitude “in my own head all day long. The minute that I start to not be grateful is when I move from a selfless to selfish state. When I see myself getting into this selfish place, then I can work back.”
Larsen of The Joy Team is such a believer in gratitude that she writes reasons for her gratitude in a journal.
“I think that keeping a gratitude journal is an amazingly powerful tool. It made a huge difference in my life,” she said. “If you focus your energy on things you are grateful for and are good in your life, I think you bring more good things to you. It’s kind of magical in that way. It’s a very powerful tool to help you come out of depression. It will turn your life around.”
