PRAYER

Accents importance of saying thanks

BY KATE BLAIN

ASSISTANT EDITOR

Toward that end, she led a prayer service on "praying thanks and praise" Nov. 25 at the Pastoral Center in Albany.

A spiritual director, member of her religious order's leadership team and facilitator for other religious orders across the country, Sister Chris has studied the many places in Scripture where people are called to prayer.

Gratitude

While prayer should include adoration, contrition, thanksgiving and supplication, Sister Chris noted, people often forget the first and third aspects in their zeal to say, "God, give me" or "God, forgive me."

The Psalms particularly address praise and thanksgiving, she said. Psalm 150, for instance -- the shortest of the psalms -- reads, in part: "Praise the Lord in His sanctuary, praise Him in the firmament of His strength. Praise Him for His mighty deeds."

"Thanksgiving and praise are part of being a human person," said Sister Chris. "We're called to remember we need to say thanks."

Appreciation

In some ways, she remarked, thanksgiving is second nature to people. She told the story of an atheist she met who described walking with his young son by a mountain lake.

Looking around, the son said, "Thank you." The father asked why his son was thanking him, and the boy answered, "I'm not talking to you."

"The kid didn't know God, but his `thank you' was spontaneous," said Sister Chris.

Personal thanks

A Christian understanding of God is to not just say "thank you," but "thank you, God, creator, loving parent," Sister Chris said.

"We believe in a personal God who loves us," she explained. "We did not give ourselves life; if we acknowledge the fact that life was given to us by someone else, we have to thank our parents and God."

As people practice thanks this Thanksgiving, Sister Chris advised thinking about what we're thankful for -- "being grateful for breath, a new day, the things we take for granted."

In an age when some countries still have no clean water, she noted, Americans would do well to be thankful even for water rights. "We live in opulence, and it's all a gift," she remarked.

Praise be

Praise is connected to thanksgiving, Sister Chris said, adding that the Jewish people have many prayers beginning with, "Blessed be God who...."

In Catholic tradition, she pointed to the song "How Great Thou Art" as a perfect example of praise: "Oh Lord my God, when I in awesome wonder consider all the worlds thy hands have made...."

"It's a reflection of God's greatness," she said.

Sister Chris' prayer service included such music; she focused on the song "Table of Plenty" and read from the letters of St. Paul, who often praised and thanked God.

Making a difference

Thanksgiving, she added, isn't only about God, but also other people. She recounted a recent experience in the Columbus, Ohio, airport, where she saw a man return to thank a ticket-counter employee for helping him get to his destination the previous month.

"He came back to say thank you, and she kept saying, `Thank you for telling me,'" said Sister Chris. "If we did that more often, what a different world it would be."

(Sister Chris spent two years helping Trappist communities in Georgia, Kentucky and Utah choose new abbots. Although she was hired to facilitate the changes, she said she learned as much as she taught. "I always had these impressions of monks being really different," she remarked, "but they struggle with the same things we do." Time in the monasteries also taught her about Thanksgiving: "When the monks pray at 4 a.m., they've been in silence, and they break the silence with, `O Lord, open my lips, and my mouth shall declare your praise.")