Brother David Stendl-Rast, a Benedictine monk, is one of the world’s foremost authorities on gratitude. His comments on Thanksgiving deserve to be quoted at length:
“On a superficial level, the giving of thanks is merely a social convention. Its forms vary greatly. In some societies the absence of all verbal expressions of thanks indicates not a lack of gratitude, but rather a deeper awareness of mutual belonging than our society has. To the people in question, an expression like “thank you” would seem as inappropriate as tipping family members would seem to us. The more we lose the sense of all belonging to one big family, the more we must explicitly express that belonging when it is actualized in some give and take. To give thanks means to give expression to mutual belonging. Genuine thanksgiving comes from the heart where we are rooted in universal belonging.
Wholehearted thanksgiving engages the whole person. The intellect recognizes the gift as gift. Thanksgiving presupposes thinking. The will, in its turn, acknowledges the interdependence of giver and thanksgiver. And the emotions celebrate the joy of that mutual belonging. Only when intellect, will and emotions join together does thanksgiving become genuine, i.e., wholehearted.”
When the shaliach tzibbur recites the Modim blessing, the congregants each recite a private mediation of thanks. This gives each of us the opportunity to align our intellect, will and emotion to thank G-d with “all our heart and all our soul,” and to create that sense of mutual belonging.