social connection

People are essential to our wellbeing. Isolation from human interactions contributes to people’s poor health: mental and physical.

At the same time, while we notice some people, we often overlook others, who are integral to our daily living. Now’s the chance to look twice. Recognize someone who regularly shows up in your life, in ways that you don’t usually realize. Cashiers, custodians, cooks, drivers, delivery people: these are just some of the people who work ‘frontline’ roles, and due to the pandemic, and have received recognition as essential workers.

Meanwhile, let us give thanks for relationships that renew and comfort us. Those folks who are beloved family and essential friends. Others who enrich our lives as teachers, coaches, mentors, coworkers, colleagues, companions, care givers, and more. Today you’re invited to actually focus on at least one these connections and their meaning for you.

While we’re giving thanks for people, we can even acknowledge difficult personalities that challenge us. Perhaps there’s a person in your life who troubles you; this person might also become — through gratitude — a teacher of sorts, offering up life lessons that they didn’t intend to share, but that you have found a way to claim as your own.

            Today, let us give thanks for people of all kinds. — Rev Gail

And now, our God, we give thanks to you and praise your glorious name. But who am I, and what is my people, that we should be able to make this freewill offering? For all things come from you, and of your own have we given you. — 1 Chronicles 29:13-14

… and they sang responsively, praising and giving thanks to the Lord, “For he is good, for his steadfast love endures forever toward Israel.” And all the people responded with a great shout when they praised the Lord, because the foundation of the house of the Lord was laid. — Ezra 3:11

Then we your people, the flock of your pasture, will give thanks to you forever; from generation to generation we will recount your praise. — Psalm 79:13

We must find time to stop and thank the people who make a difference in our lives. ― John F. Kennedy

In the end, though, maybe we must all give up trying to pay back the people in this world who sustain our lives. In the end, maybe it’s wiser to surrender before the miraculous scope of human generosity and to just keep saying thank you, forever and sincerely, for as long as we have voices. — Elizabeth Gilbert

You know, when Nelson Mandela went to jail he was young and, you could almost say, bloodthirsty. He was head of the armed wing of the African National Congress, his party. He spent twenty-seven years in jail, and many would say, Twenty-seven years, oh, what a waste. And I think people are surprised when I say no, the twenty-seven years were necessary. They were necessary to remove the dross. The suffering in prison helped him to become more magnanimous, willing to listen to the other side. To discover that the people he regarded as his enemy, they too were human beings who had fears and expectations. And they had been molded by their society. And so without the twenty-seven years I don’t think we would have seen the Nelson Mandela with the compassion, the magnanimity, the capacity to put himself in the shoes of the other. ― Dalai Lama

Generosity does not require material abundance. When I think back on the many people who have been so generous toward me, I never think of money or “things.” Instead, I think of the way they gave me their presence, their confidence, their affirmation, support, and blessing — all gifts of “self” that any of us can give. And where does generosity come from? Perhaps from another life-giving virtue, the one called gratitude. — Parker Palmer