Patrick M. GARRY. The Power of Gratitude: Charting a Path toward a Joyous and Faith-Filled Life. Eugene: Resource Publications, 2023. pp. 118 + xvi. $16. pb. ISBN 978-1666765902. Reviewed by Neil FULTON, University of South Dakota Knudson School of Law, Vermillion, SD 57069.

Sometimes extraordinary lessons come from ordinary lives. This is one of the lessons that Patrick Garry shares in his memoir of the lives of his parents Michael and Elizabeth Garry. His book uses the outwardly ordinary lives of two “ordinary" people to provide extraordinary insight into the meaning gratitude can bring to our daily lives. In a great way, the book is a work of philosophy masquerading as a memoir.

Patrick Garry (who is my colleague at USD), is a prolific author. In this highly personal work, he shares many anecdotes of growing up with his parents Michael and Elizabeth Garry. They made their home in the relatively small town of Fairmont, Minnesota. Michael operated a grain elevator while Elizabeth was a homemaker for Patrick and his siblings. Nothing on the face of the story suggests the extraordinary. However, Michael and Elizabeth engaged their ordinary, everyday lives in ways that demonstrated extraordinary openness, joy, hope, perseverance, and love. Garry rightly attributes these virtues as the products of his parents’ deep and fundamental gratitude. Michael and Elizabeth Garry saw their talents, their family, their community, their work, and all that they had or encountered as deep gifts. This recognition that all that they were and all that they had were gifts animated every aspect of how the Garrys treated people around them. This comes through in repeated instances of the Garry's demonstrating love and deep charity (both spiritual and practical) to friends and strangers alike.

Two aspects of the book and the lives of Michael and Elizabeth are particularly striking. First, their gratitude was perhaps deepest for the daily events of life. For Michael and Elizabeth Garry, serving clients at a grain elevator and caring for sometimes boisterous children were more than daily tasks. They instead become acts of ministry and worship. This aspect of the book calls to mind Kathleen Norris’s moving reflection on daily work, The Quotidian Mysteries. Viewed with gratitude, the ordinary is never ordinary. Rather, it is the extraordinary opportunity to see Christ in others and to our offer ourselves as a gift to them. Second, the Garrys’ gratitude is unflinching in the face of sadness and loss. A life built on gratitude is not selective, it instead sees all things as gifts and offers consistent gratitude in return. This orientation calls to mind the thoughtful meditation on grief of American humorist Stephen Colbert when he observes that, “you can't pick and choose what you're grateful for" if you see all things as gifts. Michael and Elizabeth Garry clearly lived with gratitude for all things, both the good and bad.

Patrick Garry's book succeed simply as a personal memoir. At different times, it is funny, sad, and touching. But goes beyond this to provide a deeper observation about our orientation towards world. Garry steps back from the personal and daily life of his parents to assess how our culture fails to live a life of gratitude. It can be seen in the simple contrast of how Elizabeth and Michael lived with how much of society does. Too many view others as instrumentalities or impediments rather than humans made wonderfully in God's image and entitled to our unconditional love. Too many are obsessed with the new rather than understanding and appreciative of the past. Too many see themselves is entitled to wealth, fame, or status without an appreciation for their actual place in life or recognition of the value of the simple life, well-lived. Too many are centered on self rather than externally orientated to care for others. Going beyond a memoir of his parents, Patrick Garry has written an insightful diagnosis of social pathology and prescription to heal it.

Knowing Patrick well, I am inevitably biased by my own observation of his well-lived life of gratitude. This book is an important contribution for all of us to assess our own lives and how we live. If it brings us collectively a bit closer to a world in which all of us are animated by gratitude, it is something to be deeply grateful for.