Long Steep: It's Giving Thanks - An Episode on Gratitude

In this Long Steep, we brew gratitude slowly and intentionally—through theology, psychology, and lived experience. No buzzwords, no toxic positivity, no “be grateful for your trauma” energy. Just real tea.

We start with what gratitude actually is: a state, a trait, an act of reciprocity shaped by context and choice. From there, we trace how gratitude shows up across traditions:

• Christianity, through prayer and gift-of-life theology
• Islam, through shukr of heart, tongue, and action
• Buddhism, through mindfulness, interbeing, and katannuta
• New Age practice, through ritual, shadow work, and personal agency

We honor Indigenous cultures without speaking over them, acknowledge harm without reframing it as “growth,” and explore how gratitude practices—from candle offerings and prayer, to journaling and daily reflection—can help reorient attention without denying pain.

We also get real about the science: gratitude can support wellbeing, habit change, and resilience (Emmons & McCullough, Seligman), but results are mixed. Context matters. Autonomy matters even more.

If all you take from this episode is one honest moment of peace, that’s enough. Gratitude doesn’t need to fix everything—it can just soften something.

Sip along, share it with someone rebuilding their grounding, and tell us what you’re grateful for today (or not). We’re listening.

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You can use the link at the top of the show notes or email me at religiositea@gmail.com to share your stories, thoughts, insights, reactions, and much more! I'm waiting for you to spill your ReligiosiTea!

Chapters

• 0:00 Setting The Table: Gratitude
• 2:31 Defining Gratitude And Its Nuances
• 6:08 Cautions: Harm, Trauma, Toxic Positivity
• 7:08 Context On Indigenous Narratives
• 9:11 Christianity’s Lens On Thankfulness
• 13:15 Shukur In Islam: Heart, Tongue, Action
• 18:37 Buddhism, Interbeing, And Katanutta
• 23:12 New Age Paths And Shadow Work
• 26:46 Rituals: Prayer, Offerings, Journaling
• 31:15 Everyday Kindness And Reciprocity
• 33:56 What Science Says About Gratitude
• 37:20 Choosing Your Own Practice

Transcript

Adren: 0:00

We're spilling tea on religion and health. Where intersections of faith and healing combine on religiosity. As this podcast discusses religious beliefs, religious experiences, personal testimonies, and mental and physical health, some of the content may be uncomfortable or triggering for some listeners. Content warnings will be provided in the description of each episode. Any personal journeys discussed on this podcast do not constitute health, medical, or religious advice. We are simply trying to capture the lived experiences of real people who would like to share their own stories about religion andor health. Hello. This is your host, Adrian. Have you ever thought about gratitude? Do you do daily gratitudes or send thank you prayers to a divine power? It is Thanksgiving here in the US, and I wanted to take some time to talk about thankfulness or gratitude from a spiritual and well-being point of view. Gratitude is actually baked into a lot of religious or spiritual practices and belief systems. Gratitude is something I think most of us have experienced as a feeling or state of mind at some point in our lives. Like, seriously, we've all been thankful for something. So let's take a closer look at what gratitude looks like in practice. In this long, steep episode, we will take a look at what gratitude really is from a definitional standpoint, outline how gratitude looks in different faith practices, learn about specific gratitude rituals and practices across these belief systems, and finally ground it back into our typical flavor of health and well-being by looking at what some scientific literature has to say about the impacts of gratitude on our mental and physical health. So let's all grab our tea, head into the cathedral, and get ready to be thankful. The definition of gratitude, according to the Oxford Dictionary, is the quality of being thankful. Readiness to show appreciation for and return kindness. The word gratitude comes from the Latin gratis, which means pleasing or thankful. So really, the word gratis is about the positive feelings around the state of thankfulness. These feelings can be of relief, happiness, pleasure, delight, etc., for having received a kindness from someone or something else. I like the last part of the Oxford definition, which highlights the reciprocity of kindness as being a part of what defines gratitude. Gratitude is an interpersonal concept and transpersonal concept. It is relational to other people and to other concepts, like being grateful to the universe or a higher power. In either sense, whether you're grateful to your friend for giving you a ride or to a god for giving you a life, we still see a relational component of what gratitude really is. And before you ask, yes, gratitude can be intra-personal or in relation to yourself. A sort of meta-relationship between you and the kindness you were able to show yourself. Gratitude can also be trait-based andor state-based. Trait gratitude is the idea that having gratitude or a higher likelihood to exhibit gratitude or exhibit a higher level of gratitude is based on gratitude being a personality trait. This can look like gratitude being a core value or core practice that someone holds. State-based gratitude is the actual state of being grateful or thankful after receiving kindness. It is the situational experience of feeling gratitude in a specific moment. These two concepts can also influence each other. Or rather, if you have trait-based gratitude, you may be more likely to see things to be grateful for. But context matters. Some research shows that gratitude is also influenced by appraisals, a psych term for how we interpret things. If we think that there was more effort on behalf of the person who's doing us a kindness, or if we feel that we have gained more than the other person through their kindness, we are more likely to experience a higher level of gratitude. So the T is it matters how we approach the idea of gratitude and whether or not we are more likely to experience feelings of gratitude through our values and other characteristics. And it also matters how we interpret someone else's kindness. Quick reminder: I don't believe that we inherently owe anyone or even ourselves gratitude. I am not saying, nor will I ever say you should be grateful or thankful. Gratitude should be felt and expressed naturally in any way that feels comfortable to you. There are recent trends that I've noticed around being grateful for harm, for example, because of the lessons that you took from that harm and the growth you may have had. Not everyone learns from harm, nor is all harm a lesson, and we are never in the business of telling people how to feel about their own circumstances around possible experiences of harm. You do not have to have grown from your traumas, and you do not have to be thankful for traumatic experiences. There are a variety of coping mechanisms, and if you are working through trauma, please seek mental health care from a trusted professional if you are able to. Toxic positivity is a real thing, and in our business of sipping tea, we want to honor that that tea is never poisoned. Now that we have a more basic understanding of what gratitude is and how we interpret it, let's look at what gratitude looks like in spiritual practices. First things first, I want to give honor to the indigenous cultures of North America, particularly as this is a day that has historically perpetuated harmful stereotypes about indigenous peoples and attempted to mask the horrors of colonization that are ongoing in this nation. While modern Thanksgiving is a far cry from its mythic beginnings, there is no erasing the harms that have occurred through school plays, movies, and propagandic narratives that revolve around this holiday. I will not be speaking on indigenous practices in this episode, as I cannot lend my voice to these beliefs, traditions, or experiences. I do not know that in the American psyche we perceive Native American religions to be holistic, to honor Earth in reciprocal relationships, and to express gratitude towards Earth and creation for what we receive from it. I cannot say that this is true or not for indigenous peoples and the varying faiths they practice. Let's remember there were many nations on this land before European colonization began, so there is no one unifying religion or cultural practice among each nation, and to suggest that each unique culture is somehow one and the same is disingenuous and harmful. So I invite anyone who can speak on their own culture and traditions to join me on the podcast so we can affirm, denounce, or otherwise correct the mainstream narrative. Now let's steep the tea on other traditions I have studied, participated in, or had enough exposure to to feel comfortable giving my own take, while grounding them in the body of information that exists around them. Let's start with gratitude in Christianity. I suspect, based on American demographics alone, and based on my growing listenership in the UK, cheers, and the Philippines, Mabuhai, that many of you will understand the Christian perspective on gratitude. That is to say, in the Christian psyche, life is a gift that has been bestowed upon us by God Himself. Our salvation is a gift that has been bestowed upon us by God Himself through his earthly begotten Son and Earthly Vessel, Jesus Christ, and that the good news of the Gospels and the ability to understand the Word of God is another gift that we are free to receive if we so choose. To reiterate, as I often do on this pod, I am not Christian. I am attempting here to frame the viewpoint from within the viewpoint in social science terms. I am attempting to understand the emic perspective, which is the insider point of view. According to some scriptural sources, gratitude is a spiritual practice and way of life embedded in the Christian worldview. Let's look at some verses. Philippians 4 6 through 7 says, Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your request to God, and the peace of God which transcends all understanding will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. Psalm 118 1 says, Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good, his love endures forever. I think it's safe to say that these verses emphasize a transpersonal type of gratitude. In the Christian worldview, one should be thankful for our lives and experiences that have been given to us by God, and the reciprocal act of showing gratitude is to put all faith and trust in God no matter what your circumstances may be. Joyce Meyer on her ministry website explains that there are innumerable reasons to have gratitude, and encourages her followers to practice gratitude for the multiple blessings they have, particularly if they are housed, clothed, have a car, do not face resource scarcity, etc. She discusses how giving thanks through the day can show God how grateful his followers are for who he is, and also help reach the realization of how he works in the lives of those who believe. I do have to critically wonder how well this message translates for people who do not live with the luxuries or amenities many of us in the United States have and take for granted. Billy Graham stated that thanklessness was sinful. He says that the Bible commands us to be thankful and connects thankfulness to being aligned with God's message and light. The Center for Action and Contemplation reiterates the idea that life is a gift, and we must honor that gift by maintaining right relationship with ourselves, with others, and with God. Relationships that are defined by gratitude and humility for the very gift of existence itself. They call for radical gratitude, to be thankful each and every day and to avoid resentment. We can see the traces of the arc of gratitude across these messages as being grateful, namely to God above all else. We can also see how gratitude in this sense may lean towards that gratitude for difficulty that I discussed earlier. So take that with a grain of salt, y'all. If this model or framework works for you, then that's great. If it doesn't, again, there are other things to be grateful for and other ways of understanding or processing things that you don't feel very grateful for. If you do take this message to heart, the Asbury United Methodist Church says gratitude holds immense transformative power for our lives. They say that being grateful, especially when we are being challenged, shifts our perspective from what we lack to thinking about what we have, and what we have to be grateful for. In public health or public policy work, we see shifting in policy or programs that do just this, and we call it moving from a deficits approach to an assets approach. We see what communities have as strengths, resources, and leverageable skills or resources to meet their own goals rather than trying to fill the gaps we may think they have. All in all, from what we have seen in the biblical verses to ministry interpretation of Christian life, we can clearly identify theme of gratitude as being central to the worldview and practice of Christianity. Now I'd like to invite another progeny of Abraham to the tea table. Let's talk about Islam. Fun fact: I took Arabic as my foreign language when I was completing my bachelor's. This led me to becoming good friends with a few Muslims in my area who invited me to attend iftar feasts during Ramadan and shared about their faith with me. I've been in shared space with Muslims praying and broken many fasts with my dear friends. I am not saying this to tokenize my friends, nor to say that I am an expert to speak on Islam, but it is a practice I have witnessed and a religion written in a language I can partially understand. It's also a theological cousin to Christianity. Don't fight me, it's an Abrahamic faith, or faith of Abraham, along with Christianity and Judaism. I'm not saying it is equivalent or quintessentially similar to Christianity. In Islam, one of the core foundations of faith is shukur, which roughly translates to, you guessed it, gratitude, or thankfulness. In fact, you say thank you in Arabic by saying shukran. According to the Yaqeen Institute, the practice of gratitude is a moral obligation, act of worship, and is foundational for experiencing happiness. Let's look at a few Quranic verses to get a taste of what Islam is brewing for us in relation to Shukur. Quran 14.7 says, If you are grateful, I will surely give you more. Quran 3112 says, and whoever is grateful is grateful for the benefit of himself. Quran 3159 says, and Allah loves those who are grateful. Quran 4061 says, indeed, Allah is ever bestowing a favor to mankind, but most of them do not show gratitude. Again, we can see the transpersonal experience of gratitude as expressed in the Qur'an. We can see how, according to Islamic text, a relationship of gratitude to Allah only creates more blessings and more to be grateful for. We can also see an admonishment of sorts of the human condition of not being grateful enough. These threads are similar to the threads we see in Christianity, where gratefulness to God, Allah means God in Arabic, can help reinforce faith and, according to those who believe, lead to a more fruitful life. According to Al-Muslim Quran.com, there are three dimensions of shukur. Gratitude of the heart, Shukur bil Qalb, which is an appreciation for the blessings we receive from Allah, gratitude of the tongue, shukur bil, or expressing gratitude through your words, think of Islamic sayings like Alhamdulillah, which means praise to Allah, and gratitude of actions, shukurbil, which means to help others and do good to show gratitude for the blessings you yourself have received. That is to say, gratitude or shukur, is a way of life for any Muslim, and that gratitude is given to Allah in feeling and word and shared through good acts towards others, highlighting the role of gratitude in every aspect of life. Again, similarly to what we have just heard about Christianity, Shukur seeks to shift focus from what we lack to what we have, and have to be grateful for. It is entirely on the level of people of no integrity. A person of integrity is grateful and thankful. This gratitude, this thankfulness, is advocated by civil people. It is entirely on the level of people of integrity. What is interesting to me about this quote is the connection of gratitude and thankfulness to acts of civility and connection to others. In this example, we are seeing how gratitude is interpersonal, a community issue. This makes sense because for Buddhists who are not monks, we have an obligation to promote the well-being of our entire community, not just ourselves, and to work interconnectedly with each other. There is a concept in Buddhism called interbeing. This concept discusses how we are all connected to one another and indeed to all sentient life. So it makes sense that from the cosmological view of a religion like Buddhism, gratitude would not be so much of a transpersonal experience, it would be more of an interpersonal experience. I think Buddhism subverts the transpersonal a bit because the higher power really is the interconnectedness and shared experience of all living beings. That is not to say though that no gratitude is transpersonal. Let's back up a bit. What does gratitude translate to in the Buddha's language? Here I am drawing from the Pali language, a written language that the original collection of sutras was written in some 600 years after the Buddha's death. The Pali word is katanutta, and it roughly back translates as to have a sense of what was done. To me, this seems to be more reflective of the idea of psychological appraisals we touched on at the beginning of the episode. It is cited as a spiritual practice that can help cultivate mindfulness, compassion, and awareness of the interconnectedness of all beings. This concept brings us appreciation for life, for others, mindfulness of the present moment, a remembrance of impermanence, a call to generosity, and serves as a foundation for loving kindness, the universal love many Buddhist practitioners seek as a goal in their meditation practice. All of this in one word, and all of this in gratitude. Now, Buddhism also promotes the idea of being grateful for life itself. Much like the faiths of Abraham. In Buddhism, being born as human sets you up with the ultimate potential to reach enlightenment. Human experience is the perfect balance of struggle and ease that makes it possible to understand the nature of reality. Something other forms of existence struggle with if they have too much adversity or too much ease. So we should be grateful according to Buddhism. So, how do we become grateful in a Buddhist sense? Mindfulness, according to some, brings us into a state of being grateful. Dharma wisdom says that practicing mindfulness leads to the direct experience of being connected to life and to understand the context in which we live. This realization can be liberating and lead to thankfulness for the role we play in existence. Similarly, again to Christianity and Islam, we see a sort of cognitive reframing. It is not a dismissal of the negative experiences we all may face, but shifts the focus to the positive aspects in our lives. The things we have to be grateful for. Other Buddhist scholars discuss the role of kindness in gratitude, saying we cannot truly know gratitude unless we have been kind. We have to know how it is to be kind, to understand how we are then grateful for people being kind to us. Another reference to appraisal. No wonder Western psychology has been looking to Buddhism. Thank you to the Buddha for his timeless wisdom. Now I'd like to welcome to the table the egregore of the New Age. The crystal healers, the tarot readers, the do-it-yourself witches crafting their own paths. Though the New Age has new in its title, it is a blend of similarly ancient threads of thought through the human experience. One of those threads is gratitude. For this segment, I will be drawing on some of my own experiences as a former, maybe somewhat current, New Ager. Because these paths are so individualized, which many would argue is a strength of the New Age movement, it is hard to pin down any specific resources or references without diving deeply into other cosmological and theological understandings. And come on, it's Thanksgiving. We gotta eat. So let's break it down a little bit. Gratitude in the New Age is the ritualization of gratitude practices, but it all centers on the same theme of centralizing thankfulness that we heard about before. Gratitude as a spiritual practice disconnected from mainstream religions is still connected to the human experience in much the same way. It looks like connecting to higher powers and thanking them or the universe itself for the opportunities we have, the things we have, and the things we have to be grateful for. It shifts us once again from a deficits approach to an assets approach, though this is not always the case. Many new age spiritual practices put an emphasis on shadow work. Shadow work is meeting your older self from where you are now. This specific practice often centralizes learning how to be grateful for misfortune, for the lessons and growth we can gain from these experiences, and so to speak, alchemizing that pain into power. Many New Age practitioners think spirits, deities, nature, the universe, themselves, and others in a variety of ways through rituals, mantras, recitations, and movements like paying it forward. Some practices even look at seeking people out and thinking them in acts of radical gratitude, similar to radical empathy and forgiveness that we also see in more formal faith structures. Many practitioners of the new age specifically key in on gratitude because they find it so transformative and enmesh a feeling of gratitude in many of their acts and practices. It is a holistic approach to being grateful, again, for experiencing the very lives we are experiencing. According to Thanissaro Bhikkhu, a Buddhist scholar and monk, gratitude can be cultivated. So let's take a look at what practices across faiths and spiritual practices look like that might help you cultivate your own sense of gratitude if that's some tea you're interested in brewing up for yourself. For the anthropologist, nearly anything can be ritual. Let's take this particular grain of anthropology with us into this segment. Now that we've seen a few of many worldviews that center gratitude as a major aspect of a good life, let's see how gratitude is actualized across traditions. From rituals and meditations to the seemingly innocuous day-to-day rituals that we don't think of as being especially esoteric. In many faith traditions, we find prayer as a crux of building and maintaining relationship with faith and with whatever creator or greater force we may believe in. Prayer is one of the most obvious ways we may express gratitude in a religious or spiritual sense, especially if you subscribe to a worldview where thinking a higher power and transpersonal gratitude are central. Many people will pray in thanks for a prayer answered, a miracle granted, or an unexpected favor falls into their lives. Some faith traditions have specifically scripted prayers to recite in thanks, others have sayings in day-to-day moments, remember Alhamdulillah, while others still just pray openly and conversationally because they believe in a direct and personal connection with their higher power. Prayer may look different, but the real T here is that it is a direct connection between you and the greater force in your life that you probably do feel grateful towards. Other traditions are a bit more ritualized. Sometimes we light candles or incense sticks and leave offerings on altars both in public sacred space or personal altars, to say thank you for an act of benevolence, especially when we were struggling with whatever that divine intervention helped to solve. These rituals of offering are. Are often paired with prayer or recitations. Some gratitude practices are daily. We see a call to express daily gratitude in both Christianity and Islam. The New Agers also often practice gratitude through a sort of mantra cycle where they write or speak aloud their daily gratitudes, which can be things they are grateful for at the beginning of each day, a sort of baseline condition of gratitude, or if done at night, a more specific reflection on things that happen throughout the day that they might be grateful for. The repetition here is important both spiritually and psychologically. If we look at these practices from a cognitive reframing approach, it does take commitment and maintenance to keep up a positive approach to life, especially when we might be used to remembering or getting caught up on the things in our lives that negatively impact us. Some practices for gratitude are more meditative and reflective. One might sit and reflect on what there is to be grateful for and name everything they can think of. One might recite a mantra or chant from a Buddhist sutra that reminds them of gratitude as a practice, action, and state of being. Sometimes people of any faith will journal about what they are grateful for. Journaling is meditative, in case you didn't know. In this journaling, they might respond to prompts or just freely write whatever or whoever they are grateful for. Oftentimes, for someone religious or spiritual, their higher power will be listed among the things they are grateful for. Or their beliefs influence how they contextualize the things that they are grateful for. If one believes that God is responsible for all of their blessings, they might thank him first and foremost for all things. If one is practicing shadow work, their journaling might reflect how they are using painful experiences to learn and grow from, and reflect gratitude for the opportunity to do so. Gratitude looks different for everyone and is contextualized differently within faith and belief systems. Despite the similar threads of the importance of gratitude to our human experience. If any of these practices are helpful for you, I hope you take them. If not, I hope you let me know what practices of gratitude do help you. You can reach out to me on socials or through the link in my show notes. Above all, though, I want to talk about the very human experience of gratitude. Remember, everything is a ritual. Saying thank you to others or even to yourself is a ritual act of gratitude, and remembering to do it often solidifies it as a ritual in your repertoire of gratitude practice. Sending thank you notes to others can also help contextualize and express feelings of gratitude in a different way. Letters and notes are often a little bit longer than just a verbal thank you. Back to Buddhism for a moment. Being kind to others and showing kindness to others can help cultivate a sense of gratitude for the kindness shown to us, and paying it forward helps bridge us all in the ecosystem of kindness and gratitude. The most interesting thing about gratitude across faith is just how human the experience of gratitude is. The very fact that it exists across faiths and cultures and practices and beliefs shows that kindness and gratitude may be ingrained in our very nature. We are social animals after all. Social animals help each other. So the one thing I want you to take away, and this is me philosophizing a bit, is that to be grateful is to be kind, and to be grateful and kind is to be human. No matter what we all believe or don't believe in, we can believe in that particular thread of humanity and use it to blend all of our lives together in one rich tea. Not a melting pot, though. All flavors are recognized and respected. So now that we've talked a little bit about how gratitude is practiced or enacted, does it really have any benefits for our lives? If you believe faith alone and a conviction to practice gratitude is enough to convince you that gratitude benefits your life, that's really all you need. I believe our beliefs power many aspects of our reality and our relationship to the world around us. But let's take a look at what the science has to say about gratitude practices and their potential impacts on health and well-being. In 2003, researchers Robert Emmons and Michael McCullough did an experimental study on gratitude and subjective well-being. Subjective here means self-reported, which makes sense because it is hard to quantifiably measure objective well-being for each individual person. In the study, they had one group prompted to answer questions about gratitude and general well-being, while others were asked to answer prompts about the difficulties and challenges they had faced along with the well-being questions. What they found was that in different iterations of this study, gratitude was shown to promote a more positive affect, meaning a more positive outlook on life, pro-social behaviors, and health maintenance habits. However, an article written for the journal Psychiatry by researchers Ran Senson and Lori Senson that reviewed other literature showed that studies across the board have a hard time showing similar results that gratitude alone can improve well-being. What I can interpret from their findings is that someone's social and environmental contexts matter, as do their baseline understandings for quote-unquote how bad something can get. For example, veterans with PTSD who practice gratitude were more likely to have improved well-being than veterans who did not have PTSD. I think, as can be said for almost all things human, context matters. There is some research to show that gratitude can influence our overall well-being, maybe even change our outlooks on life, and encourage healthier behaviors, while other research suggests there is no such influence. This question is still being answered, but I think the thread of gratitude from ancient religions to modern science shows how important it still is to the human psyche. In a time where faith and reason are being used to answer our greatest questions, sometimes in tandem, other times diametrically opposed to each other, I am grateful for the opportunity to look through both lenses and maybe come out with something more real than either could ever answer alone. Gratitude has shown up today on this day of Thanksgiving in the US, and maybe showed us that it can never be pinned down to any specific answer, but that there are countless answers out there that can help us look at gratitude as a practice worth valuing. We simply need to pick one. It's a multiple choice test where every answer might be correct. During the turbulent times we are living through, with geopolitical strife on one side, economic stress on the other, partisan social animosity, fear politics, and angry deficit-based rhetoric all around. Maybe if we could each just take a moment to find something to be grateful for. Any small thing, it could help lessen the anxiety, strife, and turmoil, even if for a moment. Maybe practicing gratitude isn't for the benefit of faith, of science, of health, but is for the benefit of one moment of peace that we get to choose to hold on to. So let's all find something to be grateful for. I am grateful for sipping and spilling tea with listeners and friends like you, for my family, for the privilege to do the work I'm doing, including this podcast, and for the idea that gratitude, kindness, and happiness are acts of resistance. Let me know what you're grateful for. You can reach out on my social media accounts at religiosity everywhere it pops up, or through the link in my show notes. And that's the religiosity. Thank you for listening and hanging out with me. May you be happy, healthy, and well. Bye!