How Gratitude Defeats Resentment at the Thanksgiving Table

Nov 27, 2025

“Only hour by hour gratitude is strong enough to overcome all temptations to resentment.” - Richard Rohr

Gratitude every hour!. Not once-and-done, but a practice. A choice made again and again.

The Temptation of Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving—a day meant to gather with family and friends—has unfortunately become a temptation to resent those who share different perspectives or hold different viewpoints. We arrive at the table already armored, already braced for disagreement, already keeping score of slights and differences.

I know because I’ve done it. But at midlife, after several “lifequakes” have reordered my interior landscape, I’m finally learning that being right feels far less satisfying than being connected.

But connection requires something: gratitude practiced hour by hour, moment by moment.

Gratitude as Practice, Not Feeling

Here’s what I’m learning about gratitude this Thanksgiving—it’s not a feeling that arrives fully formed. It’s a muscle we build, a choice we make, especially when resentment feels more justified, more satisfying, more “right.”

Gratitude
is like a warm blanket,
providing comfort and ease.
Is like a roaring fire,
focusing us on its dancing flames.
Is like a salve,
healing the wounds, beginning recovery.

Gratitude
fills our hearts and minds,
replacing the darkness and resentment
that overcomes the soul like a cancer.

Gratitude
lightens us,
focuses us on goodness,
enabling us to feel awe,
to appreciate the enchantment
of God’s world,
God’s gift to us.

But gratitude
is also a choice—
a present we get to open,
to use or not.
We don’t earn it
or deserve it,
but we get to wield it.

- Ray Kennedy

Building a Gratitude Habit

What if we practiced gratitude today—not as a one-time exercise, but as a first step toward building a gratitude habit, which our country (and our own souls) desperately need?

What if, before we arrived at our Thanksgiving tables, we made a list? Not of grievances, but of grace. Not of what needs correcting in others, but of what we’re genuinely grateful for in them—even the difficult ones, especially the difficult ones.

Those truths matter more than our disagreements. Gratitude reminds me of that.

Hour by Hour

Rohr is right—gratitude must be practiced hour by hour because resentment is always ready to return. It’s seductive. It makes us feel superior, justified, entitled to our anger.

But gratitude does something else. It opens us. It softens us. It reminds us that we’re all stumbling through this life together, doing the best we can with what we know.

At 60, I’m finally understanding what the contemplatives have been teaching all along: the spiritual life isn’t about getting everything right or making sure everyone else sees things our way. It’s about staying open. Staying grateful. Choosing connection over being correct.

That’s the practice I’m bringing to Thanksgiving this year. A commitment to choosing gratitude, hour by hour, over the easier path of resentment.

May you have gratitude in your heart,
May you have patience at your table,
May you have love that overcomes division.

What about you? What helps you choose gratitude over resentment, especially when resentment feels justified? What practice are you bringing to your Thanksgiving table this year?

~ Ray