The pressure of praise

Two weeks ago, my family went on a trip to a remote part of Utah. We rented canoes (t-cat setups) from Tex’s Riverways in Moab, bussed an hour and a half to the Mineral Bottom Road, and put in at the Green River. The Green River goes through parts of Canyonlands National Park that are only accessible… by river. It was incredible – floating lazily down the river, through high red rock walls, catching glimpses of Native American ruins tucked up in the canyon, and enjoying the company of old friends. Multiple times, one of us would say, “This is so beautiful…” or “Wait, I think this is the prettiest part…” Trying to take it all in was near impossible.

At one point, I found myself mindlessly going into “thank you” mode. “Thank you God for this…” but I caught myself. I noticed this strange pressure to feel gratitude. Not that I wasn’t grateful or appreciative, but there was this weird sort of obligation to give thanks. It didn’t feel genuine, but it also didn’t feel contrived. It felt like… habit.

I caught myself and thought, just enjoy it.

So, I released myself from the pressure of praise, inhaled the smell of the river and the tamarisks, listened to the cicadas, felt the warm breeze on my face, and I just was.

Here’s what I realized:

Praise, gratitude, thankfulness are good.

BUT,

it takes you out of the moment. It turns your focus away from the present, the thing you’re actually experiencing, and shifts your gaze to somewhere else.

And what I found interesting is that it actually took more effort to stay fully alive to the moment than it did to turn to praise. As soon as I started wanting to put words to what I was thinking and feeling, (i.e. “thank you God for this amazing experience, for these beautiful canyons, for everything you made”), it was almost like I ceased to see and be in this amazing experience, beautiful canyons, and everything that was made.

Now, I’m not saying that praise or gratitude is a bad thing, but I think it’s important that we notice how our energy and focus shifts. In some ways, praise can act like an escape device. We are in an uncomfortable situation and we don’t know how to sit with it and be ok in that moment and endure the discomfort, so we turn to praise as a way of making ourselves feel more comfortable and safe. Sometimes praise can be a tool that shifts our perspective from thinking about how poor or sad or unhappy we are and it helps realign our vision to see the truth of how good we have it. Sometimes praise can feel manipulative. We’ve all experienced that, I’m sure. But we can also do it with God. When you’re feeling excited and eager about a new event or person in your life, there can be an outflow of praise for all the good things that are happening to you. Then, as soon as things go downhill, that praise falls by the wayside to be replaced with pleas and requests.

Again – not always. B,ut noticing the motivation and energy behind our praise is pretty eye-opening.

Where I am at in this spiritual journey, it felt more holy and sacred to just be on the river. I didn’t even take that many pictures. For much of our trip, I just kept having the thought, “this is home.” There was a familiarity deep in my soul, a comfort, a lack of surprise, like when you return to your childhood home and everything looks the same. I recognized this feeling because I felt the same way when we went to Oregon in April. I had visited Oregon a lot as a child and I LOVE the Pacific Northwest. Yet, this time, when I went there, it no longer felt magical, it felt familiar, like home, in the same way that middle-of-nowhere Utah felt like home.

As I explore this life kind of on the deeper-end of deconstructing my faith, I am leaning into this idea that I belong everywhere. If my spirit really is eternal and infinite, then all of this is my home. And with that, apparently, comes a grounded peace (so far) no matter where I go. There is a solid reassurance in my heart, that feeling of love and gratitude, just like how you can be with a close friend or loved one and feel that mish-mash of thankfulness and relief and joy without saying a word.

This is what “praise” is starting to look like for me.

Not the outward-focused chatter and endless words like I used to, but more of a silent recognition of wonder and peace that this is all mine, that I can just be, and that is enough, and that is good, and that is received and met with joy.

I think of real life and that stereotypical scene where the more a person tells you how much they love and like a gift, the more you start to believe that they hate it. Compare that to the moment when someone opens a present and there is silence as they gently (or eagerly) reach in and pull out the object. You can tell just by looking at their face whether they like it. “It’s perfect.” They might say, but, truly, words are unnecessary because you just know. There is a unspoken energy that fills the void between you and them. You can feel it. Even if they never ever thanked you for the gift, you would walk away satisfied and content.

I am learning to be more like the second receiver. To choose full awareness and attention and silence, over shifting focus and pouring out prayers.

That moment on the river, where I released myself of the pressure of praise, felt like another piece clicking into place. It felt really good and pure to be able to just sit back and enjoy the experience without needing to riddle it with words. In the past, I couldn’t have done that. I would have felt compelled, obligated, to speak praise and worship over this place. To make sure God knew how much I loved it. I would have needed the words to reassure myself that I had fully embraced this trip. The words would have come naturally, it would have been honest, but the energy behind it all would have felt more…. frantic? needy? reaching? grasping?

As we were heading back home, we stopped at a rest stop in Blanding, Utah. There was a tiny gift shop there with the kindest clerk and I purchased a book called “The House of Rain” by Craig Childs. The book chronicles his journey of {literally} walking in the footsteps of the indigenous peoples who lived in the Southwest in the age of the Anazasi. It’s an incredible book. I highly recommend it. I read through the 440+ pages in 4 days, if that tells you anything.

As I read, I imagined these early-century peoples exploring and living all over these canyons and rivers and open deserts we had just been exploring and living in ourselves. I held their memory in my mind and immersed myself in the fascinating world Childs described. Time slowed down and condensed. To me, it began to feel so thin between us and them. As I sat, silently, contemplatively, balancing on this line of the past and the future, of my past and my future, I had a strange longing for it all to just come tumbling together, all of us crashing into one another, our spirits lighting up with the friction of meeting millions of new faces. And, in a way, I think it would all feel strangely familiar.

Maybe that is what praise is meant for.

To show us that we are not separate.

This is all for us, all of this is us.

And so I challenge you – Next time you feel this urge to praise, can you just sit there instead, quietly, taking it all in, and let mysterious, unspoken gratitude fill in the blanks?