{"id":313,"date":"2017-01-12T17:02:57","date_gmt":"2017-01-12T17:02:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/connietuttle.com\/blog\/?p=313"},"modified":"2017-01-12T17:02:57","modified_gmt":"2017-01-12T17:02:57","slug":"can-gratitude-be-taught","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/connietuttle.com\/blog\/can-gratitude-be-taught\/","title":{"rendered":"Can Gratitude Be Taught?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/connietuttle.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/01\/images-2.jpeg\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"aligncenter size-medium wp-image-315\" src=\"http:\/\/connietuttle.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/01\/images-2-300x168.jpeg\" alt=\"images (2)\" width=\"300\" height=\"168\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Can gratitude be taught?\u00a0\u00a0As my beloved mentor, Ben Kline would have replied, \u201cWell, yes and no.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>When I was small I learned the \u2018magic words\u2019: please, thank you and you\u2019re welcome. \u2018Please\u2019 when I wanted something, \u2018thank you\u2019 when I was given something, and \u2018you\u2019re welcome\u2019 when I was thanked by another. The \u2018thank you\u2019 I learned to say was polite but it was also the first seed of <em>expressed<\/em> gratitude sown in my psyche.<\/p>\n<p>While I didn\u2019t always <em>experience<\/em> gratitude I was taught the <em>practice <\/em>of gratitude. \u00a0I learned to accept the value\u00a0of a gift freely given. There were times when I had physical responses to gifts: a warmth, a fullness, a knowing that this was enough. A peace, even. Through the lenses of my experience, I have come to recognize gratitude as a spiritual event.<\/p>\n<p>Today, I practice gratitude even when I don\u2019t \u2018feel\u2019 it. I say grace at every meal. Sometimes I take a moment to center and open to the gift. Sometimes I pray by rote. The practice keeps me open to the possibility of the experience. And the experience reorients me to God, to the world, and to myself.<\/p>\n<p>Can gratitude be taught?\u00a0Well,\u00a0\u00a0yes, we can teach the <em>practice<\/em> of gratitude and no, we cannot teach the <em>experience<\/em> of gratitude. But in\u00a0teaching the practice we lay the groundwork for the experience.<\/p>\n<!-- AddThis Advanced Settings generic via filter on the_content --><!-- AddThis Share Buttons generic via filter on the_content -->","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Can gratitude be taught?\u00a0\u00a0As my beloved mentor, Ben Kline would have replied, \u201cWell, yes and no.\u201d When I was small I learned the \u2018magic words\u2019: please, thank you and you\u2019re welcome. \u2018Please\u2019 when I wanted something, \u2018thank you\u2019 when I was given something, and \u2018you\u2019re welcome\u2019 when I was thanked by another. The \u2018thank you\u2019 &hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/connietuttle.com\/blog\/can-gratitude-be-taught\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Can Gratitude Be Taught?<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><!-- AddThis Advanced Settings generic via filter on get_the_excerpt --><!-- AddThis Share Buttons generic via filter on get_the_excerpt --><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[13,21,19],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/connietuttle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/313"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/connietuttle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/connietuttle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/connietuttle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/connietuttle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=313"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/connietuttle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/313\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":316,"href":"http:\/\/connietuttle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/313\/revisions\/316"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/connietuttle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=313"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/connietuttle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=313"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/connietuttle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=313"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}