Gratitude Conversations #7

[The Stage is on Fire] is a page-turner in which, much like life, there are no easy answers and yet each step of the journey yields insight and hope. This work of heart must not be missed!

Melanie Faith

Creative Writing Teacher, Essayist & Poet.

Katie Steedly’s first-person piece [The Unspeakable Gift] is a riveting retelling of her participation in a National Institutes of Health study that aided her quest to come to grips with her life of living with a rare genetic disorder. Her writing is superb.

The Society of Professional Journalists

In recognition of receiving the Dateline Award for the Washingtonian Magazine essay, The Unspeakable Gift.

I thank you … It is the authenticity of your “class notes”; and it is the delicacy and skill with which you present the nuances of classroom life and the actuality of your students’ and fellow teachers’ lives.

Maxine Greene

Philosopher and Education Scholar

Enter your email here to receive Weekly Wide-Awake

back

Gratitude Conversations #7

Anthony Ahrens. Robert Roeser. Lindsay Ryan.

Why Gratitude?

A few years ago, heartbroken and eyeballs deep in despair, I started searching for things for which to be grateful. I asked myself the question asked by poet Katie Farris

“Why write love poetry in a burning world? To train myself, in the midst of a burning world, to offer poems of love to a burning world.”

I reached out to people who — in the way in which they live — write love poems to our burning world. I cast my net far and wide amongst my heroes — those I knew personally and those who teach us all by their example. I invited artists, philosophers, psychologists, politicians, professors, yogis, writers, clergy, and others into a dialogue about gratitude. I am deeply grateful to those who said yes. Read more about my gratitude project methodology here.

Anthony Ahrens

“My continuing interests include gratitude and mindfulness, especially the relation of gratitude to the desire to be independent of others. I also have two relatively new interests. (1) Non-Buddhist contemplative practices. Many ancient traditions have forms of contemplation, and those outside the Buddhist tradition seem to me understudied. My student Milly Curlee and I have a first paper on the Ignatian Examen, an exercise developed by Catholicism’s Jesuits, accepted into press at Journal of Positive Psychology. (2) Moral psychology: (a) I have become interested in the integration of social cognitive theory and virtue theory. A grant is permitting me to do initial empirical work on this topic. A previous grant from the Templeton Foundation allowed me to write a paper, published in Social and Personality Psychology Compass, arguing for that integration. (b) My student Ryan Smout and I are beginning to study the consequences arising from witnessing others violating our sense of morality. My interests, and the work of the lab, are described in more detail at my lab page, the Emotions and Positive Psychology Lab — Emotions and Positive Psychology Lab” — Anthony Ahrens, American University Website

Read my gratitude conversation with Anthone Ahrens here.

Rob Roeser

Robert (Rob) Roeser PhD MSW has been named the Alice Valli Professor of Compassion and Ethics and the Director of Research for the Center for Contemplative Science and Compassion-Based Ethics. A joint appointment between Emory College of Arts and Sciences and the Rollins School of Public Health, we are delighted to welcome Rob to Atlanta!

The former Bennett Pierce Professor of Care, Compassion and Human Development in the College of Health and Human Development at Penn State University, Rob brings a wealth of experience to Emory. He received his Ph.D. from the Combined Program in Education and Psychology at the University of Michigan and he holds a master’s degree in religion and psychology and an MSW in developmental psychology and clinical social work. He has held faculty appointments at Stanford University, Portland State University, and Penn State University. — Emory University

Lindsay Ryan

Lindsay Ryan is an Associate Research Scientist at the University of Michigan’s Institute for Social Research. She received her Ph.D. in 2008 from the Pennsylvania State University in Human Development and Family Studies. Dr. Ryan is an investigator on several ongoing research projects, all of which involve an interest in better measuring and understanding the processes by which adults change over the life course. Her research interests include investigating individual and contextual influences on well-being, physical health, and cognition across adulthood, with a particular focus on the impact of social relations.

Read my gratitude conversation with Lyndsay Ryan here.