Thankfulness from the Heart: A Talk at the Krugs' Home

On the fifteenth of July, 1912, ‘Abdu’l-Bahá was the guest of Dr. and Mrs. Florian Krug at their home, 830 Park Avenue, New York. Near the end of His stay in the city He gathered the friends and took up the subject of *thankfulness.*

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There is, He said, a kind of thanks that lives only on the tongue. It says the right things at the right moments and forgets them afterwards. There is another kind of thanks, deeper, in which the whole soul responds to what God has given.

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> Real thankfulness is a cordial giving of thanks from the heart. > When man in response to the favors of God manifests susceptibilities > of conscience, the heart is happy, the spirit is exhilarated.

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He asked the friends to consider what they had been given: sustenance for the body, faculties of sight and hearing, the remarkable instrument of perception, the still more remarkable gift of consciousness — and beyond all of these, the spiritual endowments by which a human being can come to know God. Not one of these, He pointed out, is owed.

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But the proof of gratitude is conduct. *Manifests susceptibilities of conscience.* A heart that is genuinely grateful does not stay seated. It rises and acts. It treats other people with the same mercy it has received. It puts the teachings of Bahá’u’lláh into the small frictions of daily life — into the quarrel that no one needs to win, into the favour quietly returned, into the quiet act of inclusion.

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The Master looked round the gathering and gave them a parting hope: He longed to leave New York with His heart at peace, having seen *unity and mutual love* among the friends He was about to leave. He did not name a specific dispute. He did not need to. Each person in the room understood at once what He meant.

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