Writing

Thank you all for being here this morning. My thanks to Kelley, Rev. Jones, and the seminarians for holding this sacred space. It is an honor to be here with you.

Today’s reading is from the opening line of the Dao De Jing:

The Daoist tradition reminds us that not everything can, or should, be explained. Some things go beyond logic, beyond fairness, beyond what can be neatly reasoned through our frameworks of justice. There are experiences that resist our attempts to name, measure, or make sense of them. Sometimes, the only response left is awe.

“Thank you” is something we say every day. Showing appreciation is important in our interdependent society. It completes an exchange. It acknowledges a job well done.

Thank you for the oil change!

Or, at dinner, I’d appreciate it if you passed the salt.

But the Daoists draw attention to a type of thanks that is different, and I would like to call it gratitude. This kind of gratitude involves an experience of awe.

Appreciation often acknowledges fairness, that things are as they should be. I paid for that oil change, so thank you for doing it, and thank you for doing it well. And similarly, at dinner, since you’re on that side of the table, it makes sense for you to pass me the salt.

But awe-filled gratitude is what happens when something actually makes no sense at all. It is what happens when something exceeds our expectations, our calculations, even our ability to explain it. It leaves us speechless. It can be followed up with a “wow.”

You don’t know me, and you were in a hurry, but you saw that I was lost in this city where I don’t speak the language, and you made sure I knew where I was going before vanishing into the crowd. I couldn’t repay you even if I tried, nor would you want it, and no one will ever know that it happened.

Wow.

Or how about when someone you’ve been in conflict with suddenly is the first person to offer grace, signaling that the tension is no longer important to them? There’s often no explanation needed, or possible. The gesture does not fit neatly into the logic of who was right or wrong, who owed an apology, or who deserved forgiveness.

And there’s nothing left to say.

But thank you.

This is what Daoist wisdom shares with us. The Way is not something to be dissected, calculated, or controlled. It simply is. It moves in and through us, revealing itself in moments of wonder.

And perhaps this is part of what it means to say that the Way cannot be spoken. The limitation is not merely linguistic. It is a reminder that our concepts are not the world itself. We can describe an act of kindness, a moment of forgiveness, or the strange circumstances that brought us together, but our explanation can never quite contain the thing itself.

When we recognize that we are in the flow of something larger than our own plans and categories, all that remains is gratitude and awe.

While appreciation is about understanding, gratitude is about allowing. It is about standing in the middle of an experience we cannot fully explain and letting it be what it is. It is a willingness to receive something without immediately turning it into something we can account for.

So let me revisit.

Thank you for being here, not only because it’s the expected thing you say when you have an audience, but because of how uniquely awe-inspiring it is to have a group in quiet reverence gathered every day, across times of peace and turmoil alike.

There is something remarkable about the fact that people continue to gather here. The continuity itself is a kind of gift, sustained by people who chose to show up, to care for one another, and to hold this space open for whoever walks through its doors.

Thank you to Rev. Jones and the seminarians for holding this space with duty and love, no matter the color of the day in their lives or ours.

And working as an EMT on ambulances in Cambridge, I am reminded often of what cosmic luck it is to be alive and here at all. So much of existence is contingent. We are here because of an almost incomprehensible series of circumstances that none of us arranged and none of us could have predicted.

I can hardly grasp the magnitude of that gift.

There’s nothing left to say but:

Thank you.

Wylie D.C. Chang
Morning Prayers, Appleton Chapel, Memorial Church at Harvard University
Cambridge, MA · February 10, 2025