I haven’t seen 2012 yet. I saw the review on the Rotten Tomatoes Show and it looks like a lot of movies I’ve seen before, some of which I’ve enjoyed. Why do we love watching urban landmarks get wasted by aliens, earthquakes, floods and meteors? Movies are about identifying with the characters and living vicariously through the images on the screen. What gain does the virtual undoing of the emotional landmarks of our world offer?

I have had the privilege to know a number of people who survived the Nazi occupation of Holland during World War II. Often unlike soldiers who fought in wars, those who survived wars as civilians, especially as children, will speak more freely about those war years and the sufferings they endured. Some suffering intensifies both positive and negative experiences. The evil is obvious and obviously wrong, but the common then comes shining through as bold and glorious and is welcomed with much joy.

This past year there were some reality shows that I watched like the Out of the Wild, The Alaska Experiment and Colony. Again, the premise was similar. Take people that we can easily identify with, place them in an artificial situation of struggle, challenge or deprivation and watch. Normally indulged, well fed people like ourselves start praying with a bit more earnestness before a meal. They enjoy tiny bits of meat taken off the smallest animals they can find. They long for basic necessities like food and heat. We feel their suffering and we wonder at their joy.

I remember seeing a report that studied why some families stay connected years after the kids move away and why others do not. The report found a high correlation between families staying together and camping. Those forced experiences of even mild deprivation created bonds that endured.

One of the most amazing things about human beings is our ability to acclimate. We adjust and adapt both to the horrific and the comfortable. For a long time after living in the Dominican Republic where the electricity was unreliable every time the compressor on the refrigerator cycled off I thought the lights went out and I’d have to do some little chore adjusting to the house. People who have survived trauma of one sort or another for years respond instinctively to triggers long after they are removed from the trauma.

One of the things we get most acclimated to is comfort and convenience. It grows on us quickly. Soon the common and the ordinary goodness of life is lost to us. When this happens we become obsessed with trying to secure ever increasing levels of comfort and convenience putting in place a cycle of frustration and anger at our inability to arrive at a place where we feel totally safe and happy.

The American Declaration of Independence enshrines for us “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” but I wonder if the third clause is self-defeating. This pursuit of happiness sometimes seems to yield less happiness because it can be counter to the only sure formula for happiness which is gratitude.

A CRC minister in Canada has shaped his entire ministry around the idea that we are blind to the good things of God around us. For a while he wrote reverse bad news for his local newspaper. When there was a report of a plane crash killing a few hundred people, he’d write about the tens of thousands of people who safely reached their destinations. When the news came of the tsunami killing hundreds of thousands of people he wrote of the billions of people that live near coastlines who enjoyed sea breezes and ocean views. To me what this teaches is that the mundane seems to be the enemy of the grateful.

This Thanksgiving there will be a lot of good advice given to help us experience gratitude and it is worth taking. For most of us a little bit of intentionality and self-discipline can be sufficient to shift our attention from our obsessive pursuit of our definitions of perfection towards a more conscious and positive experience of what we already should be enjoying. This advice was given last year, will be given this year and will be given next year. We are a forgetful species so reminders can be helpful.

In Philippians 4:2-20 Paul does something similar to this. Paul doing it here though, feels different from “now let’s all be grateful and work hard at it.” Paul seems to be overflowing with the stuff. If you know Paul’s life you know he didn’t need to watch a disaster movie or live through a war. His life was easy until he met Jesus Christ and then from appearances it all went down hill. He went from being a well respected Jewish leader to a Christian rabble rouser who seemed to more often than not instigate riots wherever he tried to preach. He was eventual arrested and spent long years in prison until his execution.

What’s shocking about Paul is his joy and gratitude. For a man in prison he seems absolutely bubbly about things in a way that few in the best neighborhoods of California can match. What seems absent to him is not suffering, or the enjoyment of goodness, but the mundane. Everything looks lit up for him. Why? I think the answer is found in all of his other writings. The resurrection had begun in Jesus Christ. The renewal of all things was underway. God was moving even in the mundane creating for himself a people who would inherit all things and enjoy Him in them forever. This vision transformed deprivation, comfort and everything in between.

Our reality is no different from Paul’s although our sight seems to be. Once again we return to one of his prayers in Ephesians one where he prays that the eyes of our heart be opened so that we may see what is real and true around us, and if that is true Thanksgiving will become an every day celebration, turkey or no turkey.