Happy Thanksgiving week!

We had another good week here at common art and boston warm. The first rehearsal of Richie’s play went swimmingly! The cast members were game to put on their “theater caps” and brought energy and laughter to our first read-through, playing with putting on funny character voices and creating background noises where the script called for it. It seemed to me that having the rehearsal filmed was really fun for the group and helped us remind us all that the rehearsal time was important and meaningful.

After the rehearsal a few members offered to do interviews with the filmmakers, and it was wonderful to hear why they love being in Richie’s plays. While each member had a different perspective, everyone mentioned –in one way or another– that Richie’s plays bring joy and a sense of deepened connection to this community. Overall, our rehearsal time was spent connecting and laughing together as cast and crew and I am excited for our upcoming practices next week!

As Thanksgiving approaches, I have been thinking a lot about gratitude, especially in the context of my internship here at Emmanuel. Throughout my undergrad and graduate studies in psychology, I have learned that practicing gratitude has real physiological and psychological benefits. Expressing gratitude is correlated with lowered levels of depression and anxiety, and in turn increases self-esteem, life satisfaction, and prosocial behavior.

The idea of gratitude is often taught in tandem with a sort of toxic positivity; that we have to be grateful for what we do have even when we are facing devastation or suffering. However, gratitude is not this feeling of indebtedness to another but rather the expressed belief that we are and should be interdependent. And that in practicing interdependence, we then build a community that engages in gratitude and reciprocity. Every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday during this internship, I witness this belief in the importance of interdependence in action. I witness people being generous in their time, generous in their talents, generous in their assumptions of others, generous in their material goods. I have learned much about how to be generous from people who, materially, have much less than I.

In building this community rooted in the practice of gratitude, reciprocity, and generosity, there is abundance to be found. I am immensely grateful for my teachers here at common art, Boston Warm, and the Art & Spirituality group at Suffolk County House of Correction. Someone who has changed the way I engage in gratitude and reciprocity is Robin Wall Kimmerer. She is the author of Braiding Sweetgrass and The Serviceberry, two books that have impacted my perspective immensely. Attached is Robin Wall Kimmerer’s Thanksgiving Message, which has been adapted from The Serviceberry. I will be reading her words tomorrow as a good reminder, so I wanted to offer her words to all of you!

Happy Thanksgiving!  – Alex Shoemaker