Seeking Grateful Prophets: Creating A Shared Vision for the World

I recently stood on top of the Hill of Slane in Ireland. This is where a former slave named Succat lit a massive bonfire in 432 A.D. as an act of defiance against King Laoghaire. As I looked at green and yellow fields sprawling from one hill to another, I imagined the former slave’s courage. I wondered about all that compelled the man, who we now know as St. Patrick, to act.

While delighting in the beauty of the Irish countryside, I reminded myself of some harrowing times when I also mustered courage to take action. Many of us can recount a time or two when our spirit was so moved that something profoundly true within us became audible — maybe for ourselves, maybe for others, maybe for humanity. Courage often comes from the awareness that a need exists. 

I am aware that I have days — dark days, if I’m being honest — when a deafening silence overwhelms me. This silence exists amongst a whole lot of noise. It is not a deep, revelatory silence but rather a hollow one perpetuated by a cacophony of opinions and chatter about the state of the world. On days when I most clearly understand these times, I realize that all of this noise is trying to ask: who will save us from ourselves and from what we’ve done to each other and to the Earth?

Many of us are waking up to the fact that the world is not what we thought it would be, and perhaps how we were raised to believe it should be. At first, this may feel like a great loss and disruption to our desired worldview. It is. But what if life has far more to offer us than any constrictive ideology or formula for how to live? What if we miss what is possible for humanity because we spend so much time resisting the infinite outcomes available to us while we cling to old mindsets and structures? We see time and again in nature that evolution and emergence are core to our success. For us humans, we need prophets to call us back to our humanity when we’ve lost it and invite us to courageously go forward.

Rabbi Abraham Heschel tells us that “the purpose of prophecy is to conquer callousness, to change the inner person as well as to revolutionize history.” He goes on to say “above all, the prophet reminds us of the moral state of a people: few are guilty, but all are responsible.” Our moral state has collapsed — it is time to transform the future.

Taking possession of our shared responsibility — our humanity — is how we begin to revolutionize this broken world and drive out the serpents of our time. Transformation begins, as Br. David Steindl-Rast says, with the awareness of the great difficulties in life and an awareness of how to solve it: with compassion. At this very moment, I believe our hearts are shouting into the dark for a shared vision to emerge. So, the question for these times is not who will save us. Rather, we need to be asking each other: what will we birth together?

Each of us has been trusted with something important by being gifted this life. Living gratefully alone will not solve the troubles of the 21st Century, but it is the hill from which a shared vision can tower and benefit this century and beyond. By living gratefully, we birth a prophetic vision.

As a daily practitioner of living gratefully, I have identified what I believe a grateful perspective can provide our vision. Your experience will have more to offer what I’ve begun here. Consider this an invitation to build upon a prophetic framework. 

A Grateful Vision for the World:

Our shared values guide our systems, policies, institutions, and how we organize

A grateful perspective teaches us that we are interdependent and our success requires cooperation and care. It is our responsibility to deconstruct what is deadly to the human condition and to prevent the inheritance of hate and selfishness by future generations.

Every human is worthy of dignity and has sufficient resources to thrive

When we recognize life’s abundance, we become aware of our responsibility to ensure others have their needs met and that no one is left behind. We must urgently eradicate the greed and wealth disparities that poison us – these are vices, not virtues. 

Resources are cherished and protected for future generations

A grateful perspective teaches us that we are not at the end of the line in the human story. We are at the very beginning. In every way, we are the ancients to future generations. Living gratefully helps us prioritize our beneficiaries and inheritors by becoming the good stewards that the future requires. Ending the exploitation of the Earth and its resources demonstrates that we cherish and are grateful for all that has been given to us. 

We become wise with knowledge, truth, and hope

Living gratefully cultivates awareness — to beauty, to suffering, to the state of the world — and that awareness is the root of wisdom and the expansion of our consciousness. Our ability to hold a hopeful vision requires us to become wise so that we can achieve what is good for each other.

Leisure and strong social bonds are more meaningful than productivity

A grateful perspective teaches us how to live a meaningful life by sustaining strong social bonds. We have been gifted with a responsibility to each other, which is a privilege not a burden. Living gratefully reveals to us that we best tend to our responsibilities by enjoying all the immeasurable beauty, the joy of humor, loving friendships, and delights found in our senses, all of which nourish our work and meaning. 

You have already set an intention to be courageous by seeking to live a full and meaningful life by living gratefully. With a prophet’s voice, you are invited to speak out against the callousness of our times and cast out its serpents. With compassionate awareness, you stand on higher ground. Let the fire of your understanding burn so that our shared vision is illuminated and we all become the ones we keep talking about.

Photo by Elena Mozhvilo

Joe Primo, Grateful Living

Joe Primo is the CEO of Grateful Living. He is a passionate speaker and community-builder whose accomplishments made him a leading voice on resilience and adversity. Gratefulness for life, he believes, is foundational to discovering meaning and the only response that is big enough and appropriate for the plot twists, delights, surprises, and devastation we encounter along the way. A student of our founder since his studies at Yale Divinity School, Joe is committed to advancing our global movement and making the transformational practice of grateful living both accessible to all and integral to communities and places of belonging. His TED talk, “Grief is Good,” reframed the grief paradigm as a responsive resource. He is the author of “What Do We Tell the Children? Talking to Kids About Death and Dying” and numerous articles.

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