We leven in een tijd waarin dankbaarheidsdagboeken als warme broodjes over de toonbank vliegen. Duizenden lessen en tips worden gedeeld over hoe je een dankbaar mens kunt zijn. Want een dankbaarder mens is ontspannener, gelukkiger, liefdevoller....
In deze podcastaflevering spreekt Koos met Ciska Stark (docent homiletiek en liturgiek, PThU) en Marije Vermaas (geestelijk verzorger) over dankbaarheid. Waarom denken zij dat zoveel mensen vandaag de dag naar manieren zoeken om dankbaarder in het leven te staan? Wat moet je met een begrip met zulke oude, christelijke, papieren? En hoe kun je ervoor zorgen dat dankbaarheid geen kunstje maar een karaktereigenschap wordt?
Luister naar dit bemoedigende gesprek over hoogte- en dieptepunten in het leven. Over klagen, bidden en dankbaar zijn. Over ellende, verlossing en …
We leven in een tijd waarin dankbaarheidsdagboeken als warme broodjes over de toonbank vliegen. Duizenden lessen en tips worden gedeeld over hoe je een dankbaar mens kunt zijn. Want een dankbaarder mens is ontspannener, gelukkiger, liefdevoller....
In deze podcastaflevering spreekt Koos met Ciska Stark (docent homiletiek en liturgiek, PThU) en Marije Vermaas (geestelijk verzorger) over dankbaarheid. Waarom denken zij dat zoveel mensen vandaag de dag naar manieren zoeken om dankbaarder in het leven te staan? Wat moet je met een begrip met zulke oude, christelijke, papieren? En hoe kun je ervoor zorgen dat dankbaarheid geen kunstje maar een karaktereigenschap wordt?
Luister naar dit bemoedigende gesprek over hoogte- en dieptepunten in het leven. Over klagen, bidden en dankbaar zijn. Over ellende, verlossing en …
I've seen a few people who were very sick, that they saw the man in their position for a long time and the whole environment around them was just the desert.
Speaker 2:This is holy ground. The theological podcast is still under your feet. The Holy and the All-Daugther, the burning of the questions, the one who speaks Come in, pull your shoes out. Last I clicked on the website of healthcare provider Silverkruis. You sometimes have those days Between the pages about Polish and paid opportunities. I also found something different An extensive article about the value of gratitude and how you can train there.
Speaker 2:Quote gratitude is linked to a great feeling of happiness, more positive emotions, finer relationships and even better health. The gratitude diary or credit to journals are like warm sheets over the tablecloth. What does that say? And did the Christian believe in gratitude as well? Check out which background you're from, something with a loss of income and a point Live out of gratitude and even a special gratitude every year. How did these two things come together? I'm talking about Marije van Maas and Cisca Stark. Marije is a caretaker, she's a caretaker and she wrote the book. Thank you with letters, cisca's university head teacher, liturgie and Homilithiek as a pre-cundit at the Protestant Theologian University in Amsterdam. It's great that you're here. It's great to talk about gratitude. It's the beginning of the new season. Marije, I'd like to start with you. You wrote a book about gratitude. I believe it was in 2014. Yes, a while ago. Why gratitude? Why that theme?
Speaker 1:It's a personal story. My father was very ill when he passed away. Before he passed away, he wanted to take our leave as we were immediately in the house.
Speaker 1:But my father was very ill. He wanted to take our leave and we were all around his bed. He was in the living room. At some point he told us he was a very nice person. He said goodbye and we were going to sing. I thought it was a sad song about goodbye, but he said he wanted to sing Thank you for the age. We were all standing in the train with tears in our eyes. He was just looking very happy at the blue eyes of the sky. I was grateful we were ready to sing. He said come on, let's sing it again. That was my first lesson.
Speaker 1:I was very angry. He passed away after that. I thought how can you sing it like that? If you're so ill, you have to take a leave. I was still very young. I was just 20. I was just starting to discover everything I wanted to discover. I really needed him. I was very angry. Why are you grateful when you die? I thought a lot about gratitude and everything I did. I was always in the present. When you're in a relationship, you can be grateful. I collected all of that and gave you the book.
Speaker 2:A personal story. You say you miss him With many sides. He wasn't only grateful, but he also asked you and Jully, as a lover, to sing with him.
Speaker 1:He wasn't really grateful at that time. He wrote that in the book. He was an example for us. I thought if you can end your life like this, you have to let go of it. On the other hand, you're grateful for what you've given and also for your faith in God. I want to experience that I'm doing my best for it. I don't say I do that every time. I'm grateful for that every day.
Speaker 2:You're really involved in that. You even made a book. I want to hear more about that, Siska. I'm curious to know what role you play in your life and work.
Speaker 3:That's a big question, but in my life in any case, it's an important role. I think that's something to be done, but you're driving with your story, if I prove it right. I hear a kind of discovery that being grateful can have a kind of negative influence on others. So if you can be grateful not everyone can do that, but if you can, it's something very big, something very beautiful, something very rich. And if you ask yourself what is gratitude in your life, I think it's always the same for me. I realize that I'm a great person and a foreman and I think that's the reason why I like it so much.
Speaker 3:I like to meet young people, often older, theologian students, but to attract young people and to ask around with each other in life. That is of great importance. The meaning of your life, god and bronze and future. That's great work. So I think that's a reason to be grateful that I can do that. I also thought as a predicate that you can live close to people, but also something very important I'm 60 now and I'm very healthy and I can do great sports and do things with it. That's also something of gratitude. So it means that I, for example, in social media, if I write something. I often write something when I'm on the front line and I'm not alone, but it feels like that. So gratitude is something of my life. My life is a attitude, but that also has to do with my performance, with the perception that it's not about yourself.
Speaker 3:But, also that there is an address where you can send that gratitude to.
Speaker 2:There's a lot in it. Tell your blessings. I hear that too.
Speaker 1:As a way to get that gratitude.
Speaker 2:There's a lot in it, both of your stories, which we'll have to dive into later. You have an address and the blessing that gratitude can give to others, or if it doesn't always work. I was curious because I mentioned that in my introduction. Thankfulness is a hot item, not only in the christian world from the theology, but also from the positive psychology. I mentioned the silver cross. Was it in 2014, too, was that the context when you wrote about gratitude?
Speaker 1:A little less, but I did it the past ten years and it changed.
Speaker 1:So there are more and more people who are more and more likely to have a younger generation, who have a lot to choose from. They always look at it as, but I'm really grateful for it. It's often about value, and gratitude is one of them, but the correspondent also gave a book about being grateful. That's something that can give you a lot of peace. You know what you're doing, what choices you make and what you're grateful for. I think that's value. It's more of a knowledge outside the church.
Speaker 2:Exactly.
Speaker 3:Not suddenly I'm curious, marije, and that's a bit of a skeptic. I wonder if I'm happy with that or not, if Silver Cross asserts that, for example, on the one hand, what is it beautiful that the values that we have gained from Christian faith, that we have now called Silver Cross?
Speaker 2:that are being given from other sources.
Speaker 3:And that young people discover what values are and that you can make yourself happier At the same time. I think this is typical. That is really my sceptical. This is typical of our time that you have to realize your happiness and that one of the things that makes you happy and that is even physical, to prove that you will be happier when you are a grateful person, when you can also be grateful, when you practice in that a kind of wellness training, and I think that is also incredibly decadent. Do you know why? Because it is so instrumental and that is grateful often. But I do that because I do.
Speaker 2:Because you don't write In America.
Speaker 3:I saw and I believe that it is an American research, but I don't know that 100%. There is a Christian gratitude scale, so there is an empirical research done after the experience of Christians and then in the measure in which they themselves said that gratefulness was an important part of their existence, like you asked me just now, for example. And then there is a scale of people who are a bit grateful, or not at all, or just a lot, and those people who then also seem to be the most happy in their lives and probably also in love, they also seem to have the most positive God image, so not a God who they are afraid of, but that is all a kind of Well glory.
Speaker 2:There is a goal somewhere that you can reach to be grateful. Exactly it is happiness and little stress and good relationships, and indeed I saw that on the website of the not-so-certainty care provider. That is all with empirical research that is built. And I also asked myself you are actually from a very different faith experience, started with that work and then prepared. Maybe I want to tell you something about how you are going to write that book, what you are going to do there, but do you recognize the idea that in that broader environment of ours, that gratitude has become a very large medium, and how do you look at it yourself From the Christian perspective?
Speaker 1:On the one hand, I think that it should not become flat, so always look at what is the address. So if you only do it to be happy yourself, then you are yes, but the question is whether it is really grateful that he really lives in you.
Speaker 2:From the inside.
Speaker 1:I also say At the same time, I think, that there is nothing for everything. Every time, god also gives them an inner structure of gratitude. Thank you, thank you, thank you. And then every time also celebrate the party, even if they have a lot of things to complain about With complaints, or if they are on the way. How do you say that? That they are from the country? Oh, the country of the ballroom. Yes, thank you that word is kind of like that.
Speaker 1:That they are actually from the promised country road. Then they even have the assignment to celebrate, and I think that's really something that's so beautiful that there is a kind of rhythm that you can learn yourself, because that's ultimately something that you hope will be internalized and that you also see. God as the one who is grateful. Yes, exactly.
Speaker 2:So what you are saying with your skepticism, Cisca, that also has something to do with the ability to make. I think.
Speaker 3:Yes, with the nut, the search for the nut, but actually that is also in the Bible.
Speaker 3:That also plays a bit or a bit. Of course, there were offers brought, offers of thanks to voice God in a good way, or to take the judgment, so that you thank God through an offer and address God, and that also had a goal. And so there is also something, yes, there is something relational, and that is also not wrong in itself and that is, I think, god's historical explanation that it works like that. But our whole life in our culture is already determined by the do-us-des I give, that you give, and I say thank you or I thank you. I give you a thank you or I expect a thank you, because I then again the relationship is again in one way, well, those are very social mechanisms that are very good, but I think, I think, marije, that we both also look for something else, something that is precisely that gratifying character of that you thank and that you praise. That depends on you Very often you bring thanks to God and sing a praise, just like with your father that that gratifying character also has a value.
Speaker 2:And what exactly do you mean by that gratifying?
Speaker 3:character. I mean, it doesn't have to, it doesn't have to, but it does. If it were in you, Because it comes over you, it flows over you, Because you yes, because it is also in your human being. Maybe you hear.
Speaker 3:That we are made to be grateful so that they are not very beautiful To think about that and that also belongs to it, or that also belongs to the complaint and also to the root, and that's why it's also well, my fuck is the liturgical, the homilical, and that is the talk. Sometimes it's unfulfilled, but still the standard that in the Christian liturgy, the worship, the litany and the love prize, the church and the glory, that it actually also overlaps in each other, that you feel in the deepest misery yes, but yes, but yes, and then you can also rise above yourself or by others is given up.
Speaker 2:Could you also be a bit more specific about Christianity? Say, as it's about gratitude, that what I read about the gratitude journals and so on, that it has a lot to do with you. You have to focus on the positive in your life, right, so you have to find the positive in everything and give little attention to negative feelings and emotions, because if you give a lot of attention to that, it will only get bigger. Focus on the positive, while what I'm telling you now is a bit, but Christian gratitude is very close to where you might experience suffering or or anger or what you say. Church and glory are close to each other. Is there something specific about Christianity? Does that make it different than the general attention for gratitude or something like?
Speaker 1:that I think when we're talking about it, it's as if Christian realizes that everything is in gift, so that you don't do the gratitude to succeed to reject or to have a positive feel at the end of the night. But it's a basis, keeping everything in gift and I just have it for nothing free Maybe we'll come back to that in the word egoistic, free and I'm grateful for that. So you give more back to God instead of giving something back to God, because I want to want something back, and that's what you do when you're suffering or when things are not so positive in your life.
Speaker 2:I'm also curious, marije, because you went to the research and wrote a book and could you share what you've been doing in that book? I can't tell you all that now, but what's the message you want to share with the people who read that book? If it's about gratitude?
Speaker 1:First of all, you can practice it. So it's a living style or character. Not a style, because then it's flat, but it can really become a character, a value that you can advertise and at the same time, if you practice that more often, I think that you will also get out of it more internally. So that it will get out of it. But also, if you go back to what's in the Bible about grateful people, that they often go forward in the suffering they're suffering. So that's an example of the story of Noah.
Speaker 1:It's a terrible story actually it's often used as a children's play, but it's a very truly story because the whole world is destroyed. But first of all, what Noah does when he goes out of it. Well, there's, a whole world is destroyed, but he goes out of the boat and thanks to God for a new life. He looks up. So he looks at all the mother and all the things he's doing to himself, but he looks up and then thanks to God, and then we come up with the promises with that rain, that this will never happen again. I'll always stay faithful to you, I'll always listen to you and your neighbour.
Speaker 1:And then I think that's what I think thank you for doing. It helps you to look up, to look back to God, to look back at what situation you are in, to thank Him. But you keep the world in your hand. You have my life in your hand. You are there and I'm proud of you. Maybe not for this world that you always get better, but it's a very different kind of care, the thankful care. It doesn't have to do with well, indeed, that you become happy, but that you maybe also find peace and quiet in God in the situation where you are.
Speaker 2:That's what I think I'm trying to understand, and that's actually very special. I think You're talking about your father and you're talking about Noah, and we both describe the same gaze, that eyes that look up.
Speaker 1:Yes, but you can often do that in the Bible also. Very often the words used are very often it isa, the purpose of God. So it's also very beautiful. It says in Hebrew it's also Yadah, for example thank you, and the word is Yadah. We know that from Yadah. So if you take something from Yadah with your hand, you take something from your hand. So the Hebrew translation of Yadah is a hand. But also to say thank you, that's a care. It's not just from the inside, but with your hands, with your everything, with your whole body. Do you that's with your whole body, who you are, do you? You do that? Say the whole. But anyway, those kinds of things you still come across in the Bible or the words are all that we all thank you for. It's not just about Well, you have to look for something at the end of the day, something you're grateful for.
Speaker 1:But it has to do with your whole character and attitude.
Speaker 2:Yes, exactly because what you just said, that's what I think of it, from the Quaritude Journals of every day, thinking about three things we're grateful for, and write it down, and that's when you get less stressed out, and that's nice for the positive. But what you're now saying, and what your book has also delivered for yourself and for the readers, is that you look up, and I actually heard two things. Siska just said thank you. It also has an address for me that might be in there. You look up because that's the address you're grateful for. You look up to God as the giver of good things, but maybe it's also that you're looking up, even if you're in the mod of status or no-wag that you know there's another, there's a way too much bigger than what I can only see, or something like that.
Speaker 3:Yes, that's nicely said and I think that works too. But I also think that it's actually only when you're grateful that there's something in a kind of freedom, because don't forget that gratitude and gratitude and so on, there's also an old tradition in the Christian tradition, a kind of addiction that can also have something of slavery. So people who always say thank you, thank you, thank you well, the way I said it, you've already tried it, so keep it up. I mean that sounds very independent, very small earlier, and not only earlier. But there are of course, enough people in their lives who don't have as little self-esteem as they should be because they're made independent or are made to die.
Speaker 3:And I think the Hedendas is a leaven debate, of course, with the exception of that, but also in the early days, also in the Diaconia, in the Christian Diaconia, that people were expected to be grateful and, out of loyalty, to keep themselves positive until faith and church, while they might not have been prepared for that.
Speaker 3:Or I even heard from those terrible stories that people were given money from a Diaconia to buy new equipment or new facilities in their house and if they had something else to do, namely a house where they were in love, then it wasn't meant because they had to.
Speaker 3:Well, I don't mean that here, because that would almost be a kind of confusion of the own nest of church and Christian tradition, because don't forget how much good has happened, very much. But if gratitude is in the sphere of independent relationships, then it misses that freedom, that generosity that is needed to be really grateful. Then it is because you may not have expected that you would get something like that, that you would get nothing for it, that you think, yes, I didn't deserve this. And then there is also a very authentic Christian notion under it and you can interpret that in different ways. But if you just said, is it also Christian? Is it a Christian notion? Well then, in Christendom it is also perfectly related to the offer of Christ, which we could be grateful for, or the life of Christ, the example that he has given. So that is also addressed in a sphere that you think wait a minute, I may not have contributed to anything, but it is there and I can hold on to that to relax, to relax a space and to relax a nest.
Speaker 2:Yes, maybe that is also possible in that somewhat challenging sphere where freedom is going down, and I just mentioned it. The solution to gratitude also in the introduction that is, of course, catechism, yes, but that when you also get a life rule of gratitude right.
Speaker 3:Yes, but then you have to read it well, there is nothing, but I am not so catechism.
Speaker 2:Just a little bit of catechism people.
Speaker 3:No, look, you would almost think in the three pieces of that three pieces that there is also that following order, property is coming to gratitude. But until real gratitude comes, if you first realize your misery and then realize that Christ has done it for you, oh God, jesus has given his onlyborn son, and then you can be grateful. But that is actually not a kind of accordance that I think is meant, not a kind of methodical path, because the Catechism has already been used with a kind of almost glorious perception of I am in all things and with heart and soul in every little phase. I am already from Christ. So it's not a kind of Also there, it's not really a kind of something forward and maybe the fun is, and I hope so actually a little bit. But that might be the Catechism that I am going to tell myself later on.
Speaker 3:That is the third part of the Catechism that goes about gratitude. That also goes about the work of Christ, but goes about the renewal of Christ and it goes about the Holy Spirit. And the Holy Spirit is also the Spirit that teaches us to live and that heals us and that teaches us all good, beautiful things and properties, and that is the way of a gala friendship. Gratitude, that's what I also get. So I would say in the Catechism that third part of gratitude is actually embedded in the renewal of life and maybe and I look at Mariah because you know that, maybe from your research maybe gratitude is something that is renewed, our life perspective, that gratitude is something that if you realize that you are grateful, that you are also renewed.
Speaker 1:Yes, it gives a new perspective, indeed a new hope.
Speaker 1:I think that is for sure.
Speaker 1:And then there might be a nice part of it that you, eugérus Thie, would like to tell you something about it, or would I tell you something about it, because of course it has everything to do with Christ and with what he has done.
Speaker 1:That word is also in Greek, and the gare is then a good gift, and we have made that together until the word, or that is the word.
Speaker 1:We say it as gratitude, but it is also the evening meal, because we celebrate Eugérus Thie, and actually so we thank, we say also through the four of the evening meal, we thank God again for the offer he has given to us through his son, because the evening meal is just a moment when we stand still, that we are through his blood and his body and we are able to get to a new relationship with God, and also that this also gives a new perspective for the rest of the week. Actually, if you have to go to the Catholic Church, that every week standard for every mistake actually is often the Eugérus Thie to make a new beginning, to make a new start, that you are grateful. You actually write to God on the table, and that word is indeed the evening meal, but also the good gift. And then I say that it is actually a very beautiful combination and that it also renews your perspective.
Speaker 3:Yes, and that it also goes together with also the offer we bring In the Catholic tradition, in any case, I think the Roman Catholic tradition.
Speaker 2:Well, the fact that there is an offer brought, that is maybe not so much a protest. Well, I also think of the offer of our gifts, that is part of it the Roman Catholic tradition, the collectibles, sometimes silver or whatever and also stood at the door for the Diakuni, because you share, so you are not going to your own church or, what no?
Speaker 3:the Diakuni. And then it is also beautiful that such an order of evening meals that also begins really saying thanks, because, yes, it fits us, it's good for you to thank, or in other words, it is our duty and charity, so it can't be different than you thank.
Speaker 2:Yes, but it can be different, because most people are not so grateful in their life-keeping because they may not have been so trained. They have not read your book yet, but drive.
Speaker 3:No, or they are in a therefore independent position, that the first order is that they are entitled to ice and that they are not completely grateful to others, but that there is another line. But the tone setting in the Eucharist is to say thanks to the prize of love, and that is a tone height that, in our world in general, is not so present.
Speaker 2:No, what matters is that it is a bit weird with that word thanks, because on the one hand we say yes, it can a wrong form of thanks can actually be a kind of independence, yes, workers or in position. If you say thanks, you have to say thanks because the feeling of you are independent and at the same time they were before yes, the popular form of gratitude, and that also has some decadence. And that reminded me of a quote from Kiza Magenda, what I had come across, a Congolese writer, and he wrote in a truce about gratitude and he said it must be grateful. So thanks is necessary because you then realize that there is a lot we don't have control over. That makes us vulnerable, also implies the responsibility to be responsible for people who have it less. So he says, well, you're only grateful.
Speaker 2:It's been said a few times. When you say I didn't deserve it either, it just happens. Actually I'm in favor, you say in Ansisca, and then you also hear that you say I didn't deserve it. So I can't say to someone who has it less if you should do your best or something, because if I'm grateful to people, then I should also share it. But of course that's what someone who is already in favor of, is going to be Such a statement of this man, of Kiza Magenda.
Speaker 3:Yes, I think so too, but the examples that Marije also gave, and examples that really touch, are just examples of people who sometimes not so much luck or have positions in favor of, and who can be grateful anyway. I think of my parents, who actually had a very happy life, but they were not rich at all or they had no influence, they didn't belong to the privileged in their social environment, and yet they were very grateful, and I'm sure that they also prayed every evening but also thought that is, of course that proves the living condition. You don't have to reach something first, but it is a principle that you are dependent, but also a person in relation and in all your vulnerability.
Speaker 1:That's also my experience after a while in Africa, and because there was so little in the place where I lived, things were just not self-sufficient. So there was actually a kind of perception for a long time. But we pray a lot because we hope that it will come at the end of this day with the fact that we have enough food and that we can give our children food, and at the same time we always thank God. We thank God for everything he has already given us and in that too, a kind of not in favor of position, but a very much conviction of God is good and he is our thanks-for-reward.
Speaker 2:What is the secret of such gratitude?
Speaker 3:I think it has to do with the fact that you can be satisfied, not in a way of oh, what am I happy or something, but that enough can also be enough, and I think that is a very important thing, and I think that is a very important thing. And I think that is a very important thing. I think that is a very important thing. You can see the small that you can also confuse, that you can not only confuse what goes wrong, but that you confuse all small things. And then you have to look good, then you have to look very well, and then you have to be quiet, Then you also have to take the time and space in our haste time to count those blessings, and then you don't confuse them. No One. One for one that may be a very nice thing. One for one that you really are at the heart of all those things.
Speaker 1:That's what the Anfos camp does. The American writer I think it's Canadian. She writes a very impressive book and she started with, as she felt herself a bit of a mockery. So she started with just writing down. But what was I thinking about today that she started with writing in the book? Well, I have to turn back to the past because children have all become dirty again. But I think I can wash dirty socks because I have known children or I have children and I can wash them for them and I have a washing machine and well, that came very quickly on many points to be grateful for. But the surprise, the learning from the things you actually complain about or you annoy. She writes very funny in the book.
Speaker 3:So that's a kind of thinking. So we actually have to get rid of those red bubbles along the way.
Speaker 2:But it comes very close to that positive psychology. But it's always very close to each other.
Speaker 3:Of course, but that's also the beauty. Christendom is not something from a completely different world or something. No, it also closes to what is good for us and our culture, If we live according to those living rules and realize that. Yes, thanks to that, it is also a mockery. It is strange that it is not mentioned in the drive of the cardinal mockery.
Speaker 1:Well, actually I also think that that comes from the fact that it is described very nicely also from the very beginning. Of course, paul says the story about God has made the world good and that everything is good. And yet Adam is unhappy. He wishes to a yes, he feels lonely and says, but I miss something. And actually he describes it very well. And so it goes on and on. Adam is a man. He is actually always looking for something to miss. Unhappy, he can't be surprised about what he is going through and he keeps looking for it. But there must be more, and that's actually what you're saying. Can you perhaps help to be grateful enough enough to find enough, but also to be surprised about what there is all?
Speaker 3:That is difficult, isn't it? I mean, I find that difficult myself Not to look at. I am an ambitious person, always wanting more, wanting better. Of course, that is stimulated in our society, but also in the Bible. Look that man, that bread that the people of Israel had found in the difficult toch, through the Waste. They found it. They also didn't have it themselves. They didn't say no, they had to do it, but they could do it, but it was for one day. And you say yes, okay, but you always keep looking for more and you really want to make sure, and that can't be so to be happy about what you get for this day, give us the bread for today. Or, for example, the great, cool story of Elisa, the prophet, who gets a visit from a high officer from Amman, from Syria. Was it the two kings in five? But I don't know. Well, he was sick, amman was sick, and he comes to the prophet and he is always by the prophet, he is taught by the prophet.
Speaker 3:He is going to bathe in Jordan and then he is taken care of by his well with laziness with laziness, with a lack of labor, with diseases, and then he comes back to the prophet and then he is very grateful, of course, because his life is renewed. So he has a complete caravan with gifts and he wants to leave it with Elisa and he says no, no, but with me again. I don't want that and that actually seems a suggestion. You don't have to thank me, but you have to thank God. And then Amman wants to take a party ground from Israel. He says, yes, but then I have a place where I can bring a kind of offer to the God of Israel. It's very beautiful that he wants to go out of that way to thank God. But then he says he's jealous of Elisa. He thinks it's a shame.
Speaker 3:Yes, you can always get nice things Well this is not going to end, but above all, it's very cool. Then he says, yes, actually is he going to welcome the Austrian Moores of well, of, of of gratitude.
Speaker 3:You also have to receive, so it's very difficult I find it difficult to really receive something where I actually think, but it's too big a gift or something, so that. So that's the grass, that's what he's going to do. He's going to go after it and without saying anything to Elisa, and he says, well, yes, but with a smoothie he wants to have something. So he actually says goodbye, he actually says goodbye to that piece of gratitude and Elisa, of course, has that, because then you have a prophet for him who sees that and then grass is punished with that disease. So that's so sad that he's actually on the ice of gratitude or that sacrifice. That doesn't work either and that's really nice that it just can't.
Speaker 2:No, it doesn't work like that. It doesn't work like that, no.
Speaker 3:But it also shows how difficult it is. Well, or that the story shows you don't know that it's also difficult to really receive gratitude from another.
Speaker 2:Yes, but maybe it was just about thinking about helping another to be grateful, because then you're talking about gratitude, and gratitude is good. Well, you can even say it fits you very well with faith to be grateful. It's in the heart of faith and it brings all good things. And yet, just a moment, what is the secret of gratitude? Yes, also that you are satisfied with enough and that you can be grateful even under difficult circumstances, because you change your view constantly on new. My question is then how can you do that another? Well, it doesn't work anyway, because then that freedom is missing. You need that freedom to be grateful has not been explained yet. How do you help people get there now to be more grateful Without you being forced to be grateful, because gratitude is the worst without it. I have the idea.
Speaker 1:And without you then falling into that kind of American journals. Yes, maybe you are a very good journal.
Speaker 2:I have nothing against it, but there may be that whole tangible one and also a bit of that idea of that it is really a technique to reach something else and then it also misses that freedom which can be so beautiful. I am asking you because you are a caretaker, so you often come across people in very difficult situations.
Speaker 1:Well, what I think is that, but that also has to do with my school. When I come across care, I always come along and I'm not going to tell how people should come out or so. But what I notice is that very often, when people are in such difficult periods, I cannot explain myself to be grateful and I'm not going to say that now, but you have to be grateful. I just drove here to drive here to the parking lot and I know that there are a number of children there and I know the parents there. I would never say to those parents but you know, you have made it very difficult but, God is still good, so you just can't explain that that is really something.
Speaker 1:That is a way for people to be themselves, and I still notice that as a caretaker I sometimes do get things done. But it is people's own search right to discover in their lives how God is and how God is chosen. What I often see is that when people are able to move their perspective from their circumstances to God, they can change their whole attitude so that they can get out of their misery. And the pain and suffering is not only that, but also that other side.
Speaker 2:But maybe you are really grateful right, if you come into a very difficult situation and then you are going to just keep the suffering out with someone, I think. But at some point you might think, well, it would be very nice if you could be grateful again, but maybe someone is not. Do you think you will give a lecture?
Speaker 1:No, I don't think so. I think that God himself, people, should be convinced. That would never be my role.
Speaker 2:You would not be your book.
Speaker 1:You would be your book, or something, but I think you will so you have to cover it up yourself.
Speaker 1:Yes, that's what I was just saying. What I thought was really funny is that I saw a few people who were very sick, that they saw the man in their position for a long time and all the surroundings around them were just the desert. They said, oh, it's difficult for you. And they said, but look, I saw a bird today and he was in front of my window and, yes, I'm lying here on my bed very sick. But look, I saw that bird. I know that the world is.
Speaker 1:I was allowed to wake up in the morning and I still breathe, and I saw a bird. And I find that very bizarre to actually make a measurement of, because sometimes I think, oh, it's really a very tough story, and that someone else comes with an example where they notice, but look, god is dragging me, or through it, or I saw a light point, I saw a man in the desert, and then I often see the one who listens and who is encouraged, instead of me being a little bit more, so you're also busy with the priest right, that's right I can think of that.
Speaker 3:It stimulates people to be grateful, but Well, yes, to start with and in connection with you, marije, to put up with gratitude. Of course it can't be. It also camouflages. That is, that doesn't work, but it also camouflages. It is also a power. So that won't work and you don't have to want that.
Speaker 3:No, in the liturgy and in the preaching, I think that's very much money, that you Actually two things that you experience it with each other and that you that there is also a collective that can be grateful, where you don't have to take part at that moment. But that is it. So, even if someone else is happy for the bird, I can still be sad, but I'm also happy that the other bird can see or hear. So there's something in that that's when you're in the liturgy with each other that love saying goes on, that gratitude saying goes on, and there's also something in that you help each other remember.
Speaker 3:The basis principle of liturgy is to remember that you think back, just like in the Aegean prayer. You think back to all the good things that God has done for Israel, for us. So you're just going to count your earnings in the journal, so you're going to think and you're going to think well, where am I at this moment, and then you look at the future, and then you expect, and then you hope, and then you're a little bit, and that movement that starts somewhere, or that word starts to think somewhere and that's actually liturgy Word is in that perception of oh yeah, but wait a minute, we don't have everything to think about ourselves. So I think that's already important to learn to think. I'm also grateful myself that I have learned to thank and I thought, thanks to our collective meals at home, that was often a kind of obligation, of course, a kind of obligation. Now we're thanking you from the heart, but that's something you do. You form it in the end. Yes, but that's a bit complicated.
Speaker 2:On the one hand, you both say that you can't put it up.
Speaker 3:The text is on the hand To form it say and that's finally important, and I think that's also important for preaching. It also needs experiences, and those experiences must, of course, stay connected with the language and with the rituals, with the symbols and in, for example, preaching. It really doesn't help if you I read a preach by George Whitefield about the preparation. There was a preach about duty, the duty to gratitude. Well, that can help, just so you remember it. But in the end it's about preaching. I think that you Show, don't tell, not just tell. But if it were the experience of gratitude, that means that touches and you think, oh wait, but that kind of spirit-reconciliation experience I want to share that.
Speaker 3:Or, for example and that's also in the language, for example, if you, I had to think of Psalm 107. That's a praise for the gratitude of the Psalm, whereas if it were in a kind of prayer structure, every time the stories of people are told, there were people who were in need and they called God and they were saved. Let us, the Lord of Primes. And. And then there were people on the sea and they were with their sheep. They were handling the drive, but there was a storm and it was all very exciting, and they were in great need, but they were saved. Let us the Lord of Primes. And then there were people who were sick and they were in need of death In a whole category. If it were the one category after the other, and you feel unwilling, you think, wow, maybe I hear something in that kind of drive, so you're going to share it. So I think, thanks to that, it has something, something evocating, it calls for something, but also something inviting. It also needs to be done to help.
Speaker 2:Yes, and that yes that's something, and actually that's also a very beautiful circle of this conversation we have with each other, because we started with such an experience of gratitude, right Of your father, marije, and of you, and that was well evocating and inviting, so to speak. That's why you're also going to look at what it actually means and can I also grow myself in that, and you also invited others to grow along with you from that experience. That's actually very special. We have already come to the end of the conversation. We are a bit through the time we have. Maybe it's nice and maybe not at all, but you have to say that to also give something to listeners. Tell them that you think well, I might actually become a somewhat grateful person. Do you have a tip?
Speaker 1:Well, I just had to think about what you were talking about remembering. So you still remember not only the wonder, but also remembering. That can also be very expensive against the Old Testament that there is indeed. Well, you mentioned that story. He also takes sand with him, an A man, because he wants to remember what God has done. He also wants to pay God with it, but he also wants to remember, and so there are always memorials on the table in the Old Testament. That is if I remember what God has done, and that would be the tip I have and, yes, that is indeed very practical.
Speaker 1:But that you make a sort of thank you pot where you then think things that you think but here I really have a hand in my life or here I have made something beautiful with it, where I am God-grateful that you do that in such a thank you pot and that you sometimes just write a letter or proof of it a cashier or something, a nice meal that you had with someone you are grateful for, for a friendship, that you do that in that pot and that you sometimes just take it with you. Look, my pot is quite full with a lot of things where I am grateful for, where I think things that I am grateful for because I am finally God-grateful for everything that he gives.
Speaker 2:Beautiful, very concrete. Do you know anything about the addition of a sister?
Speaker 3:Yes, yes and that actually comes from the fact that I am now working for my work also working on the bit and thank you days and the analysis of liturgical material and that comes because I hope that there will be a kind of reward for that phenomenon of bit and thank you days before the August. So if you ask me what I would like to give you, I think try to start with the perception that we live on a earth that carries us, in an atmosphere that gives us air and space and oxygen and fruits that grow and technology that carries it, and all farmers carry it with them, and sometimes that is more constructive and sometimes that is also not determined in the future. But there is growth and there is an earth that carries fruits and that feeds us, and not only us but hopefully also worldwide, and that if we are grateful for being there in that connection with the earth, then I think we will also be able to do that differently.
Speaker 2:Nice, yes, remember, look at it differently. It can help to be grateful and to renew your perspective again. I am grateful for the conversation we had. Thank you for coming here. I thought it was very nice. Thank you. This was Heilige Grond, a podcast of the Protestant theological university and the theological university Kampen-Utrecht. Are you enthusiastic about this podcast? Then make a decision in your favorite podcast app so that others can find us better Until next time.