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Readers write: Grateful for a Thanksgiving filled with grace

Letters to the editor for the Feb. 1, 2021 weekly magazine. Readers discuss the importance of gratitude in everyday life.

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Staff
  • By Monitor readers

Grateful for gratitude

In the Monitor’s commentary newsletter I received recently, the highlight for me was the article “A Thanksgiving like no other: Finding uplift in a dark year” by Michael S. Hopkins, from the Nov. 23, 2020, Monitor Weekly. I loved Noelle Swan’s audio recording of the story and the accompanying photos. The article was so beautifully written (I read along as I listened) and it filled me with joy and gratitude. This experiment, as it was explained by Ms. Swan at the end, was a huge success from my perspective!

Melody Horrell King
St. Louis

Daily practice

Gratitude can and should be a regular and daily occurrence. Breath itself is something to be grateful for. Gratitude steadies us in our daily routines; more importantly, when we encounter unexpected obstacles, gratitude helps us find an even keel. In gratitude we find strength, and in turn we can strengthen others. When we combine our own gratitude with compassion, then we find power and love in our community.

Thank you to the Monitor for this uplifting Thanksgiving broadcast. May there be many more. Here in Taiwan, my home away from my California home for nearly 10 years, it is especially appreciated. Be thankful for the good works the Monitor does and the joy it spreads hither and yon.

Robert V. Waring
Taipei, Taiwan

Removing fear

Thanks so much for this Thanksgiving story! It puts a better perspective on the many demands we seem to be enduring right now. And it helps to remove some of the fears that appear to be circulating. 

I’m going to look for gratitude wherever and whenever I find it. It could be watching a grey heron fishing for its breakfast, the leaves falling, or when a person in the grocery store line offers to let me go first. 

Robin Etter
Houston

Refreshing perspective 

Regarding the Thanksgiving article: It was great – it moved me to tears. I was so inspired to return to my gratitude journal (which has been longing for my attention). Thanks to the Monitor for continuing to be a fresh drink of cold water in what appears to be a desert of isolation.

Pam Mendel
Whitefish, Montana

Sweet reminder

What a treat! Thanks to Ms. Swan and all the Monitor staff for this article – a sweet reminder of the power of gratitude. I have my own list of how it has worked in my life, but to keep it brief, let me just say I loved listening to the piece as I read along. 

It felt like the wonderful storytelling I experienced as a child listening to a parent or favorite teacher – or listening to the radio when we had no TV and were living in another country. I felt embraced by the lightness of love.

Laura Lawrence
Ashland, Oregon

Meeting challenges with grace

I found this article timely and remarkably prescient; 2020 was a year of change, but change and danger can also lead to growth and ingenuity. I am grateful for so much in my life – from my sibling, who came to take care of his older sister, to my son, who is near enough to be able to help my parents.

Life is always full of challenges and difficulties. It’s how we meet them that allows us to bask in the large, interconnected network that is all of us, creating victory in small steps.

Iris L. Davis
Chapel Hill, North Carolina

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Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

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