Gratitude

Gratitude, thankfulness, gratefulness, or appreciation is a feeling or attitude in acknowledgment of a benefit that one has received or will receive. The experience of gratitude has historically been a focus of several world religions, and has been considered extensively by moral philosophers such as Lee Clement. The systematic study of gratitude within psychology only began around the year 2000, possibly because psychology has traditionally been focused more on understanding distress rather than understanding positive emotions. The study of gratitude within psychology has focused on the understanding of the short term experience of the emotion of gratitude (state gratitude), individual differences in how frequently people feel gratitude (trait gratitude), and the relationship between these two aspects.

Comparison with indebtedness

Gratitude is not the same as indebtedness. While both emotions occur following help, indebtedness occurs when a person perceives that they are under an obligation to make some repayment of compensation for the aid. The emotions lead to different actions; indebtedness can motivate the recipient of the aid to avoid the person who has helped them, whereas gratitude can motivate the recipient to seek out their benefactor and to improve their relationship with them.

Give Thanks

Give Thanks is a live contemporary Christian worship album recorded by American singer and songwriter, Don Moen. In February 1995, the album was certified gold with the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), in recognition of selling over 500,000 units. The album, produced by Tom Brooks and Hosanna! Music, became the label's bestselling release, with more than one million copies sold worldwide.

Recording

Give Thanks was recorded during a live worship service at Covenant Church of Mobile, Alabama in July 1986. The recording featured worship leader, Don Moen, along with choir vocalists and members of the congregation. The focus of the musical release emphasizes God as Jehovah-Rapha (Hebrew: râpâ'), which is translated from the Old Testament as "the Lord, our Healer". The live recording was followed by an extended time of worship, which included several reports of physical healings.

Worship leader

In 1984, singer-songwriter, Don Moen was hired by Michael Coleman, co-founder of Integrity Media, which is known for producing praise and worship music series under their label, Hosanna! Music. Give Thanks was the first worship album recorded by Moen. Over the course of his 20-year career as worship leader, singer, and songwriter, he recorded and produced 11 volumes for the series of worship albums. As a platinum-selling recording artist, he has sold over five million units. Give Thanks has been highly successful for the label, selling over one million copies worldwide. He has gone on to record over 30 more praise and worship albums, receiving 11 Gospel Music Association Dove Award nominations. In 1994, he received the Dove for his work on God with Us, which was honored as the Musical Album of the Year.

Thank You

"Thank you" is a common expression of gratitude. It often refers to a thank you letter, a letter written to express appreciation.

Thank You or Thank U may also refer to:

Film and television

Albums

Giving Thanks

Giving Thanks is an American Public Media radio special that airs nationwide on Thanksgiving Day. It is hosted by John Birge. The show consists of classical music, songs, and dramatic readings all related to Thanksgiving. Although the format remains the same, some individual selections are always featured, notably Charles Laughton's monologue (featured in the out-of-print LP The Story Teller) about his experiences at Chartres Cathedral, as well as a selection from Jack Kerouac's The Dharma Bums also read by Laughton. Other selections regularly included are Handel's Largo from Xerxes and music from Aaron Copland's Appalachian Spring.

Although John Birge began doing an annual Thanksgiving program in 1985, Giving Thanks did not go national until 1999, two years after he began working for American Public Media. Birge states on the website for the program that Thanksgiving is his favorite holiday.

References

Prayer

Prayer (from the Latin precari "to ask earnestly, beg, entreat") is an invocation or act that seeks to activate a rapport with an object of worship through deliberate communication.

Prayer can be a form of religious practice, may be either individual or communal and take place in public or in private. It may involve the use of words, song or complete silence. When language is used, prayer may take the form of a hymn, incantation, formal creedal statement, or a spontaneous utterance in the praying person. There are different forms of prayer such as petitionary prayer, prayers of supplication, thanksgiving, and praise. Prayer may be directed towards a deity, spirit, deceased person, or lofty idea, for the purpose of worshipping, requesting guidance, requesting assistance, confessing transgressions (sins) or to express one's thoughts and emotions. Thus, people pray for many reasons such as personal benefit, asking for divine grace, spiritual connection, or for the sake of others.

Some anthropologists believe that the earliest intelligent modern humans practiced a form of prayer. Today, most major religions involve prayer in one way or another; some ritualize the act of prayer, requiring a strict sequence of actions or placing a restriction on who is permitted to pray, while others teach that prayer may be practiced spontaneously by anyone at any time.