Religious Experience in a Secular Age: Part 5, Thanks for This Day

After hitting the wall of theodicy, the mental ruminations she cannot get past, we come to the conclusion of Denise Levertov's poem "Human Being":

The human being, each night nevertheless
summoning—with a breath blown at a flame,
               or hand’s touch
on the lamp-switch—darkness,
            silently utters,
impelled as if by a need to cup the palms
and drink from a river,
         the words, 'Thanks.
Thanks for this day, a day of my life.'
             And wonders.
Pulls up the blankets, looking
into nowhere, always in doubt.
And takes strange pleasure
in having repeated once more the childish formula,
a pleasure in what is seemly.
And drifts to sleep, downstream
on murmuring currents of doubt and praise,
the wall shadowy, that tomorrow
will cast its own familiar, chill, clear-cut shadow

into the day’s brilliance.

We're back to the cross-pressured experience. To the one side, as described above and in the last post, there are the storm of questions we have about suffering. But to the other side is this profound desire to express thanks: "Thanks for this day, a day of my life."

In Hunting Magic Eels I make the provocative claim that you can't be grateful for your life and be an atheist, at least not emotionally. The Shape of Joy describes gratitude as an example of self-transcendence, which research is revealing to be the pathway to mental health. Levertov's poem illustrates why. Gratitude is our emotional response to receiving a gift. So when we express thanks for our life we step into an experience of grace. (Grace and gift are the same word in the New Testament.) True, as increasingly skeptical people we offer up this expression of thanks "into nowhere, always in doubt." Offering prayers of gratitude seems "childish," like believing in fairy tales. Regardless, expressing thanks is "seemly," proper, and right. Our heads can't believe, but our hearts do. We face the Mystery and offer of prayers of thanks. 

This is religious experience in a secular age, living between "doubt and praise." We are trapped in our heads trying to solve theological puzzles, banging our heads against intellectual walls. Yet our hearts long to express thanks, thirsting to praise, to step into the light of grace.