Into It | Dangerous Songs study guide

Chapter 3: Gratitude

Study Guide for Dangerous Songs: The Psalms and a Gloriously Disrupted Life

First Words of Gratitude

What’s your relationship to gratitude? If you’ve ever felt bad for not feeling thankful enough, where does that idea come from?
What do you think of the author’s idea that gratitude is a natural response, not a performance we must enact? Agree or disagree?

Three Movements of Gratitude

Listen to Open Hand, a song about Kevin of Glendalough.
Of the three movements of gratitude— noticing the gift, engaging an other, and accepting with trust— which one is most interesting to you today, and why?

Noticing Holy Presence

All That God Does

Listen to Who is Like Our God Hallelujah (Psalm 113). What catches your attention?

Tuning In To Reality

Listen to The God of Jacob Hallelujah (Psalm 146). Drawing from your own experience, what else is deserving of some Hallelujah right now?
Who is someone in your life you can share your gratitude-noticing with?

The Strange Case of Ripening Memory

Listen to Ever-Present Love (Psalm 107). What important memories of goodness are touchstones for you that help you feel grounded?

Because You Had Our Back

Listen to Baruch Elohim (Psalm 66). Do you ever relate to the psalmists’ sense that God can be challenging as well as grace-full?

Beauty

Name three beautiful things. How does their existence effect you?
Listen to The Earth Has Yielded its Harvest (Psalm 67). What elements of the natural world fascinate you, or even bring you to awe?

An Elegant Order

Listen to If We All Belong to God (Psalm 8). How does the expanse of the night sky make you think about or feel?
Listen to Yachal (Psalm 147). What part of the natural order of creation do you find most beautiful?
Listen to It’s a New Day (Psalm 104). Is there some part of life you are particularly grateful for today?

A Mom Hiking

Listen to I Am a Mother (Psalm 131), Just for fun, imagine the sound of the woman’s voice. Pretend you know her name and character. What conversation would you like to have with her over tea?

Grateful For Uniqueness

“Your uniqueness is why the people who love you, love you.” What aspects of your one-of-a-kind-ness do you enjoy right ow? Which ones are harder to accept?

The Allowing Life

What is your relationship with time? Are you a chronically early bird, a late-y or a right-on-time person?
From the psalms, we know life comes in seasons. What does this have to do with faith and trust? Listen to In My Crying Out To You (Psalm 30) that stirs some Ecclesiastes 3 into the same song.

Living in the Flow

What activities find you “in flow?”
What friendships invite a natural sense of gratitude for your life?
From page 65: “To live in gratitude is to trust, finally, that nothing can separate us from love, and that the Holy One to whom we belong is always, inexplicably, for us.” When have you been most in touch with this truth?

Everything With Breath