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Grateful Audiobook Summary

The author of the multiple award-winning Grounded and leading trend spotter in contemporary Christianity explores why gratitude is missing as a modern spiritual practice, offers practical suggestions for reclaiming it, and illuminates how the shared practice of gratitude can lead to greater connection with God, our world, and our own souls.

More and more people are finding God beyond the walls of traditional religious institutions, but these seekers often miss the church community itself, including its shared spiritual practices such as gratitude. While four out of five Americans have told pollsters they feel gratitude in their daily lives, cultural commentator and religion expert Diana Butler Bass finds that claim to be at odds with the discontent that permeates modern society.

There is a gap, she argues, between our desire to be grateful and our ability to behave gratefully–a divide that influences our understanding of morality, worship, and institutional religion itself. In Grateful, Bass challenges readers to think about the impact gratitude has in our spiritual lives, and encourages them to make gratitude a “difficult and much-needed spiritual practice for our personal lives and to make a better world.”

Grateful is partially an individual, emotional response to our circumstances, but research has shown that what we often miss is how much more it is a communal, actionable response. Bass examines this more unexpected experience of gratitude, and reveals how people and communities can practice it and thrive, whether or not they are part of a traditional religious community.

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Grateful Audiobook Narrator

Diana Butler Bass is the narrator of Grateful audiobook that was written by Diana Butler Bass

Diana Butler Bass (Ph.D., Duke) is an award-winning author of eleven books, popular speaker, inspiring preacher, and one of America’s most trusted commentators on religion and contemporary spirituality, especially where faith intersects with politics and culture.

Her bylines include The New York Times, the Washington Post, CNN.com, Atlantic.com, USA Today, Huffington Post, Christian Century, and Sojourners. She has commented in the media widely including on CBS, CNN, PBS, NPR, CBC, FOX, Sirius XM, TIME, Newsweek, Rolling Stone, Mother Jones, and in multiple global news outlets.

Her website is dianabutlerbass.com and she can be followed on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. She writes a twice-weekly newsletter – The Cottage – which can be found on Substack. 

About the Author(s) of Grateful

Diana Butler Bass is the author of Grateful

Grateful Full Details

Narrator Diana Butler Bass
Length 7 hours 52 minutes
Author Diana Butler Bass
Category
Publisher HarperAudio
Release date April 03, 2018
ISBN 9780062801425

Subjects

The publisher of the Grateful is HarperAudio. includes the following subjects: The BISAC Subject Code is Social Science, Sociology of Religion

Additional info

The publisher of the Grateful is HarperAudio. The imprint is HarperAudio. It is supplied by HarperAudio. The ISBN-13 is 9780062801425.

Global Availability

This book is only available in the United States.

Goodreads Reviews

Lianne

July 12, 2018

Content Warning for this book: it contains elements of white feminism--and transphobia--e.g pussy hats at the Women's March. The thing I found most compelling about this book is its argument that gratitude is a communal, ethical, and political concept. It's a complex idea and I somehow wish Butler Bass had expanded on it a little more just help flesh it out in a concrete way. It was interesting reading this book because it did contain some racial analysis, and it also contained elements that relate to racial analysis but that she did not overtly connect to racism and white supremacy. For example, rampant individualism is a symptom of white supremacy, and one of this book's aims is to combat rampant individualism, but the author doesn't always put that argument in racial terms--however, she does acknowledge that native peoples and the Black community have often relied on and invented more communal ways of existing [than white culture does]. So that's one example of making the racial connection in a more overt way. She also talks a lot about power and privilege, but again, doesn't always overtly connect power and privilege to race (but sometimes she does). Overall, I found the book intriguing and illuminating, and often lays the groundwork for ideas about power and privilege, though it doesn't always clearly make the connection between those things and racial dynamics in the US, which I think is a shortcoming.

Cathryn

June 18, 2021

This book gave me goosebumps. And I mean that in a very positive way. So much of what author Diana Butler Bass writes is filled with such a bold, no-holds-barred understanding of the human condition that her words resonated so deeply, I got goosebumps.Being grateful is more than writing a thank-you note, although that's always a good thing to do. Being grateful is a way of life that you embrace not only spiritually and emotionally, but also physically. This is a how-to guide to the myriad ways we can give thanks—from saying thank you to grandparents for birthday checks to praying thanks to God for our very existence. Best of all, it's filled with practical and effective techniques on how to become more grateful.While gratitude may be a spiritual technique, it is much more than that. When done right, it becomes a habit and one that is so ingrained that it actually shapes who you are as a human being. Bass says, "Feeling grateful empowers the soul." Most important, gratitude is not about material goods. Instead, it's an emotional response to the surprises that life holds, as well as a disposition that you can actually choose and cultivate even when life feels scary, sad, or threatening. Yes, gratitude is a feeling, but even more so, it's an action.This is a very personal book as Bass shares stories from her own life, some of which are deeply private and so were probably difficult to put out there is so public a way. But the stories all serve to show how—even under the most difficult of circumstances—she still managed to develop the habit of gratitude.The superpower of this book is that it is essentially a non-preachy blueprint for developing and perfecting your own sense of gratitude. And in this sense, it can be life-changing in a myriad of positive ways.

Claudia

November 28, 2022

Thought provoking book about gratefulness. Good thanksgiving seasonal read

John

December 21, 2021

While the other two books that I have read by Diana Butler Bass centered on issues in Christianity, this book focuses on a societal ideal. Diana Butler Bass, as a liberal American Christian, wrote this book at a very trying time for her with the election of Donald Trump to the White House. This book explores the idea of gratitude from personal and communal viewpoints and looks at it as an emotion and an ethical stand. I found the ideas were wide ranging, but also deep. I think people from any religious persuasion would find something worthwhile in it, but I think political conservatives might have a hard time with it.

Susan

December 04, 2020

I was given this book, and probably would not have thought to read it. I know all about gratitude, I thought to myself. But I had lots to learn. The book is a great combination of food for thought, suggestions of practices, and some good stories. So grateful for the book, for the author and for our mutual friends who is the heart of gratitude.

Dayna

December 02, 2020

Diana Butler Bass has always written in a way that resonates with me. Her wholistic approach to the fundamental underpinnings of gratitude provided great insight and thoughts to ponder. The portion of the book that resonated with me was towards the end in the explanation or interpretation of the Biblical story of Zacchaeus. Her thorough approach brought to light the vital role gratitude plays in life--as gift and grace.

Gillian

January 18, 2023

I started this book in November while doing a gratitude practice. I wrote and sent thank you notes throughout the month to people in my life for whom I am grateful. I also participated in the author's month long gratitude focus, which included excerpts from the book. By the end of the month, I was distracted by other stuff (and other books). I just finished the book and really loved the end, where she focuses on communal gratitude and makes concrete suggestions for starting gratitude practices.

Robert

April 07, 2018

What are you grateful for? Are you even grateful? Many of us grew up learning that it is proper etiquette to say thank you for gifts, even gifts we really don't like (you know the sweater that a relative gave you that is really hideous!). We might not be very good at saying thank you, or sending thank you notes, but surely there is something to be thank for.Diana Butler Bass is a gifted writer. She writes on matters religious and spiritual. I've read most of her books, and I've often found them to be thought-provoking and even inspirational. Even when I struggle with what she writes, I am drawn into her message. This is one of those books that I think will prove inspiring. In fact, it is a book for our times. Diana began writing this book during the 2016 election season. She admits to have been soundly disappointed by Donald Trump's win and Hillary Clinton's loss. She admits struggling with being grateful at this moment in time, making this both a difficult book to write and a necessary one. She opens the book, however, by confessing that she has always struggled with gratitude. Her mother drilled into her the importance of writing thank you cards, but they were always difficult. She tried with her daughter with similar effect. Nonetheless, she may have struggled with it, but realized that there is something important about being grateful. It is, as she notes, a spiritual practice. This is a book of spirituality. I use the word spirituality purposely. While Diana writes from a Christian perspective, she intends this book to have a wider audience than the Christian audience. That broadening of audience has been in the making for some time. We saw inklings in Christianity After Religion: The End of Church and the Birth of a New Spiritual Awakening, whee she described three ways of living the life of faith, one being Spiritual but not Religious. Then in Grounded: Finding God in the World. A Spiritual Revolution, she wrote from a more spiritual but not religious vantage point, which I will admit made me somewhat uncomfortable. I liked the book, and found it thought provoking, but I also struggled with it. While the vision here is more spiritual than religious, I found myself back in tune with her writing. We human beings seem to know that it's important to be grateful. She mentions a survey that suggests 78% of people have felt grateful about something in the past week. Yet, we're living in a time when people are anxious and angry and resentful. So, what gives? Maybe we're grateful on a personal level, but find it difficult on a larger level to be grateful. Nonetheless, Diana writes this book out of a belief that giving thanks can be transformative. It can be good for us, as individuals and as society. Having said that, she warns against "cheap gratitude," which is an "understanding of thanks [that] is polluted by our toxic dissatisfactions as we praise God for material possessions instead of the good gifts of nature and neighbor" (p. xx). This is not the kind of gratitude that she has in mind. While gratitude has often been understood "as a commodity of exchange," of debt and duty, with recipients being put into debt to their benefactors -- a quid pro quo form of relationship. That is not what she has in mind. Instead, this is a "gift and response" relationship. She writes that gifts precede benefactors, so the universe, life, air, friendship, love, these are all gifts. There are signs of abundance. From a Christian perspective, God is the giver of every gift, and we are recipients of these gifts that come freely to all. For that we break out in thanksgiving. In this book, Diana looks at gratitude on two levels -- the individual (me) and the communal (we). Gratitude involves emotions, but it also involves ethics. While she breaks them down into personal and communal, they are interrelated. The way in which we emphasize me or we, emotion or ethics, will influence the way we experience gratitude. The book is divided into four parts, each with two chapters. Part One is titled "Me: Emotion--Gifts and Thanks." As one might expect, she explores how we feel gratitude. She speaks here of the heart. She notes that we open our hearts "to the constant flow of receiving and responding that happens all around us all the time makes us more generous" (p. 27). Part Two focuses again on "Me," but this time in terms of Ethics. Here she talks about developing habits of gratitude, about being intentional about gratitude. This was the kind of gratitude she was raised with, but struggled with -- the duty you might say of expressing personal gratitude. As difficult as it might be, it is important do develop intentional forms of gratitude. These are the two sides of the personal/individual. They are important and essential. But they are, by themselves, insufficient -- so we move on to the communal.Part three focuses on We, but with a return to the emotional side -- The two chapters in this section explore the importance of joy and celebration. Gratitude is relational, social. "It is about being with one another, in life together" (p. 99). It is festive. Our religious festivals, are expressions of this principle. The Eucharist (Lord's Supper) is itself a sign of thankfulness. The word Eucharist comes from the Greek word for giving thanks. It is, she suggest a feast upon gratefulness. She bemoans the fact that the national celebration of Thanksgiving has in recent years become increasingly individualistic, which is unfortunate because it has the potential to bind us all together across religious/non-religious lines. Finally, part four speaks of We in terms of Ethics. The subtitle is "Community and Politics." The book is written during the first year of Donald Trump's presidency. Many of us are profoundly disturbed by what is transpiring. It makes it difficult to be grateful on a large scale. There is great anxiety out there, and yet gratitude might have transformative benefits. She opens this section by telling the story of her participation in the Women's March that occurred the day of the presidential inauguration. Being part of this effort, gathering with thousands of women (and men), brought a sense of gratefulness, gratefulness for the community that gathered to resist forces that might affect our lives. In this section she turns to the intentionality of practice, and that includes political involvement. IN the chapter on Circles of Gratitude, she describes the power of moving from quid pro quo to pro bono. That is, moving from "this for that" to "for good." This is a different form of reciprocity, one that is not debt producing, but debt relieving. She writes that "gratitude begins with a profound awareness of abundance and builds communities of well-being and generosity" (p. 165). She envisions here a politics that is committed to the common good, not just the good of the benefactors. Yes, this is a book for our times. I will return to it again and again, especially as a preacher. I do recommend it heartily!

Steve

May 26, 2018

I picked up Bass' book for the same reason she wrote it - seemed I would like to be a more grateful person. I'm grateful, though, that Bass doesn't just focus on private gratitude - the lists and practices and letters that make you a better and happier person - but on public gratitude as well - the dispositions and practices that would make us a more just and generous society.Diagnosing the contemporary United States, Bass writes, "Ingratitude - the sort that grows from entitlement, anxiety, and fear - appeared to be one source of our political problems, like an emotional toxin released into the headwaters of a river." (182)In contrast, she writes, "Gratitude is defiance of sorts, the defiance of kindness in the face of anger, of connection in the face of division, and of hope in the face of fear. Gratefulness does not acquiesce to evil - it resists evil. That resistance is not that of force or direct confrontation. Gratitude undoes evil by tunneling under its foundations of anger, resentment, and greed. Thus, gratitude strengthens our character and moral resolve, giving each of us the possibility of living peaceably and justly." (185)"Being thankful is the very essence of what it means to be alive, and to know that life abundantly." (186)The material the epilogue on private gratitude as liberation and public gratitude as a means to justice was, as they say, worth the price of the book.

Sven

June 03, 2018

This important book will open eyes about our society and how gratitude is both a saving grace and a powerful blunt instrument of oppression. Dr. Bass clearly challenges some of the "nice" parts of the Bible, showing how our typical understanding of Jesus's words as children's stories are really withering political commentary on the domination system of government and religion of his time.And it has given clarity to current events, such as the blatant pandering to the wealthy and the use of quid pro quo mentality. Dr. Bass's comments shine light on the destruction of our democratic and legal structures by those who incite fear and promote their own interests instead of the common good. The good news is that practicing gratitude in the personal sphere, with family and friends, and in the wider society can heal. Our practice of Christianity can be rescued from the pyramid of power with a table of sharing the abundance of the world. Note: Diana Butler Bass posted on Twitter: "What if Christianity had focussed its attention on Maundy Thursday's table instead of Good Friday's cross? That the table was God's purpose and the cross was Rome's violent disruption? Easter doesn't make violence redemptive, instead it proclaims the table as Good News." How much better would our lives as Christians become if we acted this way every day.

Andrew

February 07, 2020

This book starts out with Diana, the author, discussing her ingratitude as a child. Maybe more accurately, she describes scenarios where her mother forced her to write thank you cards for birthday and Christmas gifts she had received. Diana describes the difficulties she had trying to comply with her mother's requests. I had this same identical experience with my mother as a child so I got drawn right into the book from the outset. Diana shares that now her own daughter cannot readily express gratitude for gifts received and posits that there may be INGRATITUDE in our DNA, that possibly someone in our family passed on an ingratitude gene down to us. I never learned to start expressing gratitude until I was forced to find something I was grateful for in my life when I was recovering from a lengthy illness. Once I start exercising expressions of gratitude it became easier and easier. I recommend this book highly to anyone who was never taught or never learned how to do gratitude. It makes a big difference in my life and I am glad that I eventually found gratitude and this book too.

Tina

July 03, 2018

Interesting, but needs more fleshing out.I thoroughly enjoyed this book. The history of gratitude, the psychological implications, the differing aspects were all truly fascinating. I highlighted a ton of really cool aspects that I had never thought of before.However, I kept waiting to get to an “application” section that never really arrived. There are only a few pages devoted to practices, and those few are scant recommendations. I totally understand the struggle with the material. We are all enduring the current POTUS with fear & trembling. I guess I just put more hope on finding some good applications here instead of just a brain dump of interesting research.

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