Dear Mrs. Krill

thank you for the thank you note

Listen to Rebecca read as you read along.

In the living room in front of a windowsill lined with glass paperweights, next to my great-grandma’s chair was a metal TV tray filled with intriguing items. A few pieces of candy. Cough drops. A box of tissue wrapped in a crocheted cover. A calendar that also served as a diary of visits, calls, and meals. An address book, with a section for birthdays and anniversaries. A pile of cards and letters from family and friends.

I asked repeatedly, “grandma, how do you get so much mail?”

Her answer was always some version of “to get mail you have to send it.”

I remember a beautiful card with purple flowers on the front. It was from one of her best friends, Mrs. Krill, a woman she also shared a birthday with and who went to our church. Mrs. Krill was a retired teacher who had the most perfect handwriting. The message said, “thank you for the lovely thank you note.”

Laughing I asked, “grandma, do you really write thank you notes for thank you notes?”

“Yes!” she said.

“But when does it end? They could go on forever.”

Forever scared me. Everything has to end at some point, right? When I heard about forever in Sunday School or in sermons I didn’t find the idea comforting. Forever was too long. So mysterious. Won’t we all get bored? Or start fighting with each other, like family on a road trip or stuck in the house on a snow day?

Every year I received a birthday card and Christmas card from Mrs. Krill that also included a few dollars. Late summer I’d receive a letter with encouragement for the new school year and money with an invitation to “buy some supplies or a nice blouse or anything you need.”

One Sunday after church, Mrs. Krill handed me a brown paper grocery bag. It was filled with new clothes hangers, fancy ones wrapped in silky soft pastel colored fabrics. Too afraid to ask the reason for the gift, I simply said thank you. That week I sent Mrs. Krill a thank you note. A few days later, receiving one in return. I did not keep the thank you note chain going.

With tomorrow being Thanksgiving here in the United States, I’ve been thinking a lot about thankfulness and gratitude. Is there a distinction between them? What is the distinction?

Common perceptions speak of thankfulness as being temporary, fleeting, and conditional; tied to an experience or limited to a moment. These same perceptions lift up gratitude as a state of being untethered to what is happening in our lives or in the world. These understandings feel binary and incomplete.

I did not set out to write about thanks and gratitude this week. It feels cheesy and cliché, especially this year when our country is on fire, food costs are astronomical, hunger is weaponized, and truth is not only stranger, but more real than dystopian fiction.

Is it possible to gather with family, friends and community to share a hot meal while being thankful and grateful AND tell the story of this holiday in a way that acknowledges the lasting effects of colonialism AND that motivates us to continue resisting the empire surrounding us? The short answer to this long question is, YES. And a YES requires intentionality and an ongoing commitment to not accepting what powers and principalities place on our plates without reading the ingredients first. It demands the courage to say no thanks when we are offered nourishment at the expense of our neighbors.

What if gratitude is a gift with a shelf life of forever?

Reflecting on forever, Mary Poppins comes to mind. In the 1964 version of the film she quotes the poet John Keats, saying “a thing of beauty is a joy forever.” It was many years after falling in love with this movie that I read the rest of the poem. The next line of Endymion reads,

Its loveliness increases; it will never pass into nothingness.

While this poem is largely about love and the everlasting and renewing power of beauty, my latest reading calls me to deeper gratitude; inviting me to release my fears about the possibilities of forever.

Last week, going through boxes in the basement looking for Thanksgiving dishes and decorations, I came across a bag of random items. Pulling them out felt like emptying Mary Poppins’ carpet bag. At the bottom was a lone small hanger covered in peach colored soft silky fabric. I hadn’t consciously thought of Mrs. Krill in a very long time, but suddenly she was front and center in my heart and mind.

Her mark on my life and faith has not ended. I do not believe it ever will. Her acts of kindness and generosity still inspire my own. Her graciousness evokes my gratitude all these decades since she gifted me that pack of hangers.

I long wondered the reason for the hangers. Did she notice my wrinkly clothes? Did she know that with our dryer broken for years, I dried my clothes by hanging them up, only to learn the hard way that a wet white shirt on a metal hanger causes orange rusty stains on the collar? What did my grandma have to do with it all?

The reason seems unimportant now. It’s the lesson I want to hold onto. Yes, thankfulness is a response to encounters and experiences. Yes, gratitude is a way of living in both moments and seasons. And perhaps, thanks is not a temporary conditional form of gratitude, but rather a step on the journey into the soul of it.

Dear Mrs. Krill, thank you for the thank you notes. Thank you for planting the seeds of a gratitude harvest in my life. May the fruits of who I am and how I live have an eternal impact. Like memories of your gentle smile and tender presence, may the beauty of those soft silky hangers never pass into nothingness.

And thank you readers and subscribers for being part of this growing and deepening Wednesdays at the Well community. May you always know the beauty of giving and receiving thanks. May the gratitude you offer and inspire be greater than any sorrow or grief or injustice that comes our collective way. May we create a gratitude cycle that never ever ends.

With a curiously grateful spirit,
Rebecca & 10CAMELS

Invitation to Reflection

• How do you understand the relationship and distinctions between thankfulness and gratitude?

• Where are thanks and gratefulness showing up in your life? Where are they absent?

• Does genuine gratitude feel possible in the midst of deep suffering?

• What are your thoughts on forever?

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This Sunday is the start of the Advent season. Next Wednesday will begin a five week series of Advent poems. A few years ago I shared letters written to Hope, Peace, Joy, Love, and Light. This year I’ll be sharing messages from them. What is it they want us to know, feel, and experience? Join us beginning Wednesday, December 3rd to find out.

And as part of Advent, I am collaborating with my friend and fellow poet Trent Clifford, —who many of you met here a few weeks ago—to offer an Advent Poetry Show on Zoom, Tuesday, December 9th. Tickets are free. Register through eventbrite here.