Psalm 92
"It is good to give thanks to the Lord"
Gratitude is having a cultural moment. It has for a while now, due to the research of positive psychology making its way into wellness culture. I tell much of this story in The Shape of Joy. But it’s important to make a distinction between interpersonal gratitude and what is called existential or cosmic gratitude.
Gratitude, we know, is the emotional response we have to being given a favor or gift. When we receive these gifts from another person our gratitude is directed toward the giver. This is interpersonal gratitude. Relational thanks. But where is gratitude directed when we experience the gifts of life itself? The gift of a beautiful sunrise, a sandy beach, a soft spring rain, a delicate flower, the starry sky, the wind in your face? What about the gifts of beautiful moments? A warm cup of coffee in the morning, an engrossing book, an evening walk, your dog welcoming you home or your cat snuggling in close. For the love and belonging you experience? Family, dear friends, and the kindness of strangers. For life itself? This breath, the courage to take the next step, your heart still beating.
The list can go on and on. Where to direct this thanks? To whom is this gratitude due? From whence comes these gifts? What is the source of such grace?
This is why being religious is deeply sane. There is a ribbon of grace that threads through our lives. And when we experience it our hearts surge toward transcendence. It is good to give thanks to the Lord.
Cosmic gratitude traces the shape of joy.
Title: The Geometry of Grace
Yvon Roustan ©
A breath unspools like thread through morning’s loom,
the sky a blue hymn, stitched with wings of sparrows.
We name this grace—the pulse beneath the bruise,
the star that cracks the dark but leaves no arrow.
A cup of steam ascends in cursive swirls,
a psalm the kettle sings to restless palms.
The cat’s slow blink, a liturgy of fur—
these altars wear no gold, no priestly psalm.
The rain arrives, a beggar at the glass,
and leaves the earth a debtor to its kiss.
No hand extends the dawn, yet here it leans,
a gift unsigned, a ledger dismissed.
A stranger’s laugh, a bridge of tangled sound,
connects two islands in the sea of faces.
The wind, a vagrant, borrows every sigh
and spends them freely in the void’s blank spaces.
The moon, a coin flipped by a nameless thumb,
buys back the shadows we’ve misplaced at noon.
The heart, unasked, still drums its stubborn yes
to questions posed in languages unknown.
A child’s chalk trace on concrete, bright and brief,
maps heaven’s edge in pastel hieroglyphs.
The bread we break still carries yeast from suns
that baked their light into the soil’s clenched fist.
The night unpockets stars like loose regrets,
each one a wound, each one a salve. We count
the scars that glow where mercy left its prints,
the arithmetic of loss turned inside out.
The spider spins her silk from gut and air,
a net to catch the fall of every wing.
We, too, are woven into something vast—
a tapestry where thanks is the first string.
The dog’s bark carves a chapel in the dusk,
its echo vaulting past the fence of days.
The tea cools, but the steam still writes its ode
on windows fogged with time’s translucent haze.
So trace the shape joy takes when left unclaimed—
a curve that bows to what it cannot hold.
The thanks we owe the gale, the root, the rain,
is paid in blood, in breath, in bone, in gold.
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Explanation:
**Stanza 1:** Begins with the intimacy of breath and sky, framing grace as both fragile and omnipresent. The “star that cracks the dark but leaves no arrow” introduces cosmic gratitude—beauty without a visible giver.
**Stanza 2:** Mundane acts (steam, a cat’s blink) are elevated to sacred rituals, challenging traditional religious imagery. The absence of “gold” or “psalm” suggests divinity in the ordinary.
**Stanza 3:** Rain symbolizes unasked-for generosity. Dawn as a “gift unsigned” questions human ownership of blessings, hinting at an anonymous divine source.
**Stanza 4:** Human connection and nature’s chaos (wind, laughter) are portrayed as collaborative acts of grace, blurring boundaries between giver and receiver.
**Stanza 5:** Celestial imagery (moon, heartbeats) explores gratitude for life’s involuntary persistence. The “stubborn yes” mirrors faith in unseen forces.
**Stanza 6:** Transient beauty (chalk drawings, bread) ties creation to cosmic cycles, implying gratitude for ephemeral yet recurring gifts.
**Stanza 7:** Night and stars juxtapose pain and healing, framing gratitude as acceptance of duality—scars as “arithmetic of loss turned inside out.”
**Stanza 8:** The spider’s web becomes a metaphor for interconnectedness. “Thanks is the first string” positions gratitude as foundational to existence.
**Stanza 9:** A dog’s bark and cooling tea evoke fleeting moments imbued with eternal resonance. Time’s “haze” suggests gratitude transcends temporal limits.
**Stanza 10:** Concludes with the body (“blood, breath, bone”) as currency for cosmic debt. The “curve that bows” embodies humility before life’s ungraspable grace.
The poem interlaces domestic and cosmic imagery, echoing themes of anonymous divinity and gratitude as an act of participation in an unbounded, sacred order.