Everything is a gift. The degree to which we are awake to this truth is a measure of our gratefulness…
David Steindl-Rast
Everything Is a Gift
Topic: Gratitude
Everything is a gift. The degree to which we are awake to this truth is a measure of our gratefulness, and that gratefulness is a measure of our aliveness.
Brother David Steindl-Rast, O.S.B., was born Franz Kuno Steindl-Rast on July 12, 1926, in Vienna, Austria. Raised in a Catholic family during a time of political unrest, he endured the hardships of World War II, including conscription into the German army, though he did not see combat. He earned a master’s degree from the Vienna Academy of Fine Arts and a PhD in experimental psychology from the University of Vienna in 1952. That same year, he emigrated to the United States and entered Mount Saviour Monastery in Pine City, New York, becoming a Benedictine monk in 1953.
With his abbot’s permission, David Steindl-Rast began interreligious dialogue in the 1960s and studied Zen Buddhism with teachers such as Haku’un Yasutani and Shunryu Suzuki. In 1968, he co-founded the Center for Spiritual Studies alongside leaders from several religious traditions. His writing and teaching explore the relationship between mysticism, science, and spiritual practice. Among his published works are Gratefulness, the Heart of Prayer, Belonging to the Universe (with physicist Fritjof Capra), and The Music of Silence. He spent extended periods in monastic communities and in solitude at the New Camaldoli Hermitage in Big Sur, California.
Gratitude has remained central to David Steindl-Rast’s teaching, which he describes as a way of recognizing our shared life and cultivating peace. In 2000, he co-founded A Network for Grateful Living to support this vision. His TED talk on gratefulness has reached a wide audience, and his message continues to resonate through interviews and dialogue with spiritual and cultural leaders. He emphasizes that religious forms must remain alive by reconnecting with their inner vitality, encouraging a return to what he calls “the fire that’s within.” Now in his late nineties, his life continues to reflect a sustained inquiry into gratitude, belonging, and interfaith understanding.
https://www.ted.com/talks/david_steindl_rast_want_to_be_happy_be... {David Steindl-Rast | TEDGlobal 2013 Want to be happy? Be grateful].
David Steindl-Rast
Theme: Gratefulness
About This David Steindl-Rast Quotation [Commentary]
David Steindl-Rast’s insight, “Everything is a gift. The degree to which we are awake to this truth is a measure of our gratefulness,” calls for a deepened awareness of life as it is. He does not suggest that all things are easy or pleasant, but that every moment comes to us as something given. Our ability to recognize this reality marks the beginning of gratefulness. When we are truly awake to life’s giftedness—even in hardship—we shift from expectation to receptivity.
In the expanded passage, David Steindl-Rast continues, “That gratefulness is a measure of our aliveness.” Here, gratefulness is not simply a feeling—it is a way of being that reflects how fully we meet life. This connection between wakefulness, gratefulness, and aliveness is direct and practical. When we see life through the lens of gift, we respond more openly and generously. Rather than acting from fear or scarcity, we begin to live from a sense of enough, which encourages mutual respect and deeper connection with others.
Br. Steindl-Rast’s practice of “stop, look, go” supports this shift. By pausing to notice the present moment, we create space for gratefulness to arise—even when circumstances are difficult. He acknowledges that while not everything in life is good, each moment holds the possibility of response. Gratefulness becomes an active way of engaging life—grounded in presence and attentiveness. To live this way, as he writes, is to measure our aliveness by how awake we are to the truth that “everything is a gift.”
An Additional Br. David Steindl-Rast Quote
More About Br. David Steindl-Rast From Krista Tippett [Excerpt from On Being Interview]
MS. TIPPETT: There are a few qualities—say, aspects or qualities of the experience of gratefulness and thanksgiving that you’ve noted that I’d love to just draw out. And one of them is beholding—that surprise can be a beginning of being grateful, and beholding, and also, listening. I guess what we’re talking about here is attending.
BR. STEINDL-RAST: Well, for me, this idea of listening and really looking and beholding—that comes in when people ask, “Well, how shall we practice this gratefulness?” And there is a very simple kind of methodology to it: Stop, look, go. Most of us—caught up in schedules and deadlines and rushing around, and so the first thing is that we have to stop, because otherwise we are not really coming into this present moment at all, and we can’t even appreciate the opportunity that is given to us, because we rush by, and it rushes by. So stopping is the first thing.
But that doesn’t have to be long. When you are in practice, a split second is enough—“stop.” And then you look: What is, now, the opportunity of this given moment, only this moment, and the unique opportunity this moment gives? And that is where this beholding comes in. And if we really see what the opportunity is, we must, of course, not stop there, but we must do something with it: Go. Avail yourself of that opportunity. And if you do that, if you try practicing that at this moment, tonight, we will already be happier people, because it has an immediate feedback of joy.
I always say, not—I don’t speak of the gift, because not for everything that’s given to you can you really be grateful. You can’t be grateful for war in a given situation, or violence or domestic violence or sickness, things like that. There are many things for which you cannot be grateful. But in every moment, you can be grateful.
For instance, the opportunity to learn something from a very difficult experience—what to grow by it, or even to protest, to stand up and take a stand—that is a wonderful gift in a situation in which things are not the way they ought to be. So opportunity is really the key when people ask, “Can you be grateful for everything?”—no, not for everything, but in every moment.
MS. TIPPETT: And you are a Benedictine. And it seems to me that the Psalms, in fact, provide such a rich demonstration of—gratitude is woven into almost every Psalm, in some way. But it is held together with an expression of every conceivable human emotion—anger, fury, murderous fury, a sense of injustice and unfairness and despair and sadness and disappointment. And the gratitude is still there as an insistence, but it’s more resilient than the circumstances of the moment. It’s not a reaction to their circumstances of the moment, but it’s an intention that is held. I don’t know. What is it?
BR. STEINDL-RAST: It’s not a—you put it very well. It’s not a reaction to the present moment, because that would be something automatic, but it is a chosen response.
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