Sunday Service

When eating a fruit, think of the person who planted the tree.

~ Vietnamese Proverb

Feeling gratitude and not expressing it, is like wrapping a present and not giving it.

~ William Arthur Ward

We should be especially grateful for having to deal with annoying people and difficult situations, because without them we would have nothing to work with. Without them, how could we practice patience, exertion, mindfulness, loving-kindness or compassion? It is by dealing with such challenges that we grow and develop. So we should be very grateful to have them.

~ Judy Lief

If you find yourself… hearing, again, the earth's great, sonorous moan that says… all you love will turn to dust… Do not raise your small voice against it… Instead, curl your toes into the grass… Walk through the garden's dormant splendor. Say only, thank you.

~ Ross Gay

You will lose everything. Your money, your power, your fame, your success, perhaps even your memories… But that which will be lost has not yet been lost, and realizing this is the key to unspeakable joy… Impermanence has already rendered everything and everyone around you so deeply holy and significant and worthy of your heartbreaking gratitude. Loss has already transfigured your life into an altar.

~ Jeff Foster

When you are with someone who has developed the habit of gratitude, you SO want what they have. They are not grasping for more. They are savoring, shaking their heads slightly with the quietest wonder.

~ Anne Lamott

You wander from room to room, hunting for the diamond necklace that is already around your neck!

~ Rumi

Gratitude unlocks the fullness of life. It turns what we have into enough, and more. It can turn a meal into a feast, a house into a home, a stranger into a friend.

~ Melody Beattie

With gratitude, optimism is sustainable. If you can find something to be grateful for then you can find something to look forward to, and you can carry on.

~ Michael J. Fox

(Curated and adapted for KUF from the 2025 Soul Matters materials on the theme ‘Nurturing Gratitude')

The original meaning of the word “appreciate” means to move toward what is precious. Practicing gratitude is a type of leaning in towards being truly present. It’s a practice that reengages our aliveness—that awakens us to what is precious.

~ Mark Nepo

We enter the world as strangers who all at once become heirs to a harvest of memory, spirit, and dream that has long preceded us and will now enfold, nourish, and sustain us. The gift of the world is our first blessing.

~ John O'Donohue

There is no wealth but life.

~ John Ruskin

It could happen any time, tornado, earthquake… Or sunshine, love, salvation… That’s why we wake and look out — no guarantees in this life. But some bonuses, like morning, like right now.

~ William Stafford

Your normal day is someone else's dream.

~ Anonymous

It’s not what we have that constitutes our abundance, but what we appreciate.

~ Jean Antoine Petit-Senn

So much has been given to me; I have no time to ponder over that which has been denied.

~ Helen Keller

Happiness does not make us grateful, gratefulness makes us happy.

~ David Steindl-Rast

Gratitude places you in the energy field of plenitude. Perceiving life in a consciousness of gratitude is literally stepping into another dimension of living. Suddenly the seeming ordinariness of your days takes on a divine sparkle.

~ Michael Beckwith

Don’t misuse your mind. Don’t say there isn’t anything extraordinary here.

~ The Blue Cliff Record

If our first response to the receipt of gifts is gratitude, then our second is reciprocity: to give a gift in return… When I speak about reciprocity as a relationship, let me be clear. I don’t mean a bilateral exchange in which an obligation is incurred, and can then be discharged with a reciprocal “payment.” I mean keeping the gift in motion in a way that is and diffuse, so that the gift does not accumulate and stagnate, but keeps moving.

~ Robin Wall Kimmerer, The Serviceberry

A hundred times every day I remind myself that my inner and outer life are based on the labors of others, living and dead, and that I must exert myself in order to give in the same measure as I have received and am still receiving.

~ Albert Einstein

(Curated and adapted for KUF from the 2025 Soul Matters materials on the theme ‘Nurturing Gratitude’)

November 6, 2025

This list of questions is an aid for deep reflection. How you answer them is often less important than the journey they take you on.

So, read through the list of questions 2-3 times until one question sticks out for you and captures your attention, or as some faith traditions say, until one of the questions “shimmers.” Or as we like to say, “Read over them until one of the questions picks you.”

Then reflect on that question using one or all of these questions:

●       What is going on in my life right now that makes this question so pronounced for me?

●       What might my inner wisdom be trying to say to me through this question?

●       How might this question be trying to wake me up or get me to realize something through this question?

●       How might Life or my inner wisdom be trying to offer me a word of comfort or challenge through this question?

1. When was the last time you were grateful for yourself?

2. Which childhood experience are you most grateful for?

3. Is there something you used to be grateful for that you now take for granted? What would it take to view it with fresh eyes?

4. You are aware that your life is someone else’s dream, right?

5. What would happen if you turned all of your “I have to’s” into “I get to’s”?

6. How would your life change if you paused to reflect on how many things you have now that were things you only dreamt of a decade ago?

7. How good are you at receiving thanks?

8. Autumn leaves burn bright with color, but if you blink, they are gone. So, what temporary blaze of beauty do you need to give your gratitude and attention to before time runs out?

9. Have you mistaken gratitude for a “feeling” rather than a practice? Or to put it another way, do you wait for gratitude to arise rather than proactively find ways to cultivate it?

10. What wakes you up to the gift of it all?

11. The most difficult gifts to be grateful for are the gifts given to us by our suffering and losses. Have you found the gift in the thing you wished hadn’t happened?

12.  So life’s led you into a puddle. Are you still staring at your mud-covered feet? Or are you ready to look up and notice that the wide-open sky never went away? 

13. Might gratitude for your life increase if you lessened how much you compare it to the lives of others?

14. How might gratitude be calling you to shift your thanks from what is extraordinary and rare to what is abundantly ordinary?

What’s your question? Your question may not be listed above. As always, if the above questions don't include what life is asking from you, spend the month listening to your days to find it.

(Curated and adapted for KUF from the 2025 Soul Matters materials on the theme ‘Nurturing Gratitude')

When it comes to how we should travel through our lives, our culture and religion are clearly at odds. Culture cries, “Accumulate!” Religion counsels “Appreciate!” The mantras couldn’t be more different: The commercials surrounding us scream, “Go out and grab all you can!” The pulpits before us plea, “Learn to want what you have.” 

There’s an important reminder here: Gratitude is essential. It’s not simply a nice “extra” to get around to when we can. Or to put it another way, we aren’t built for constant striving and the pursuit of more. Instead, we need moments of pause in which we are filled and replenished by the large and small wonders of this world. As poet and philosopher, Mark Nepo, puts it: “The original meaning of the word “appreciate” means to move toward what is precious. So practicing gratitude reengages our aliveness—they awaken us to what is precious.” The implication here is clear: If we want to be truly alive, we need to pay attention when moments of gratitude arise.

But is that really it? Is that all we need to do? Wait for moments of gratitude to bloom and then stop and let their beauty sink in?

As our packet this month makes clear, many folks have their doubts. In one way or another, the voices within these pages point out that there is a big difference between appreciating the blessing of family and committing to sitting down together for dinner and intentionally sharing the blessings of one’s day. They go on to stress that it’s one thing to notice the beauty of nature; it’s quite another to pull yourself out of the rat race so you have time to enjoy it. And they certainly won’t let us forget that making a list of things we’re grateful for is impactful, but not nearly as powerful as the practice of “paying it forward.”

It’s all a way of gently pointing out that some of us practice gratitude passively and others actively. Or maybe the better way to put it is to say, gratitude needs our help! It can’t always flower all on its own, because there are serious threats out there: busyness, the lure of climbing the ladder, worries about the state of our world. They all work like weeds, suffocating and crowding out gratitude before it has a chance to sprout even the tiniest leaf.  

Which means that maybe the most important part of this month’s theme is the "nurturing" part. Sitting back and waiting for gratitude to arise is simply not enough. That’s just not how gardens grow. If we listen carefully to the call of gratitude, we will hear a challenge to change our lives, not just appreciate them.

So friends, as we weave our way through this month’s journey, may we carry with us the question of “What do I need to do a better job of noticing?” But may we also not forget the possibly even more important question of “What practices of weeding does gratitude need from me?”

And as we hold both of those questions tight, may the blooming begin!

(Curated and adapted for KUF from the 2025 Soul Matters materials on the theme ‘Nurturing Gratitude')

Ask Them About Gratitude

One of the best ways to explore our monthly themes is to have conversations about them with people who are close to you. It’s also a great way to deepen our relationships! Below is a list of questions to guide your conversation. Be sure to let your conversation partner know in advance that this won’t be a typical conversation. Telling them a bit about Soul Matters will help set the stage. Remember to also answer the questions yourself as they are meant to support a conversation, not just a time of quizzing them.

Come to your group ready to share what surprised you about the conversation and what gift or insight it gave you. As always, keep a lookout for how your inner voice is trying to send you a message of comfort or challenge through these conversions with others.

Gratitude Questions:

●       What’s the luckiest thing that ever happened to you? And if you could talk to and thank that lucky event, what would you say?

●       Which childhood experience are you most grateful for?

●       Which of your senses are you most grateful for at this stage of your life?

●       Has gratitude ever guided you through or rescued you from grief?

●       Who is the most grateful person you know? What part of them has rubbed off on you?

●       Which person in your life do you wish gratitude came more easily to?

●       What has life taught you about the power of appreciating others and telling them thank you?

●       What period of your life was gratitude most absent? What period was it most present?

●       When was the last time you were grateful for yourself?

●       What wakes you up to the gift of it all?

(Curated and adapted for KUF from the 2025 Soul Matters materials on the theme ‘Nurturing Gratitude’)

A George Bailey Gratitude Exercise

With all due respect to the traditional gratitude list, recent research suggests that, for some of us, it just doesn’t work. Adding up everything we are grateful for just falls flat.

The good news is that, for those of us like this, researchers have discovered a new and more effective way of helping us feel the deep joy that gratitude brings. Instead of adding up the gifts in our lives, this approach invites us to subtract them! Instead of reflecting on the presence of a positive event in our lives (“I’m grateful I met my spouse”), you reflect on its absence (“What if I had never met my spouse?”).

Think of it as a counterfactual meditation on our lives, inviting us to imagine a world where our most treasured blessings never occurred. It’s basically what the angel in It’s a Wonderful Life famously asked George Bailey to do. 

So, if you are one of those folks who never clicked with gratitude lists, give this a try:

●       Set aside an hour some morning or evening.

●       Pick something central to your life. It can be something you consider a blessing, but this works just as well with something you are neutral or negative about. So it could be your spouse, your kid, a risk you once took like taking a gap year to travel or starting your own business, a physical aspect of yourself like your red hair, a hobby like playing an instrument or doing a sport, an injury you suffered, or even a loss.

●       Imagine what your life would be like without this thing in your life. Play out what other things would not have happened if this thing about you didn’t exist. Make a list of those things.  

●       Spend some time with that list. Add to it and edit it as feels right. Once it feels finished, reflect on it, paying particular attention to what kind of feelings arose and what sparked those feelings.

●       Finally, if you feel comfortable doing so, share the thing you picked to remove from your life and the list of things that would have disappeared with it. Who should you share it with? Trust us, you will know.

(Curated and adapted for KUF from the 2025 Soul Matters materials on the theme ‘Nurturing Gratitude')

For many, meditation and compassion go hand in hand. By setting aside time to direct our attention and thoughts in very intentional ways, meditation re-wires our brain so we are able to experience the world and interact with others differently. The Buddhist practice of metta meditation (also known as loving-kindness meditation) is one of the most well-known compassion meditative practices, but there are so many other compassion-oriented guided meditations out there.

To honor this long-established connection between compassion and meditation, you are invited to establish a daily compassion meditation practice for a week (or two) this month. To help you explore the many types of meditations out there, we’ve put together a list of diverse guided meditations to try. You can find that list by following this link: https://docs.google.com/document/d/13QPwt93L89fvmbTTfBAOXEm4B4XYWCnHkjSdqGGoVjM/edit?usp=sharing

You do not have to do all the meditations on the list. Just pick the ones that interest you most.  

(Curated and adapted for KUF from the 2025 Soul Matters materials on the theme ‘Cultivating Compassion')