Harvesting Gratitude

As the maple trees surrendered their last blaze of color and the prairie grasses faded to gold in recent weeks, I’ve been reminded that harvest season is a slow gathering-in. It’s a time when the land invites us to pay attention: to what has ripened, to what still nourishes, and to what we may have overlooked in the rush of ordinary days.  

This season gently tugs us toward gratitude—not the perfunctory kind we sometimes rush through around a holiday table, but the kind that widens our gaze and shifts our posture. A gratitude rooted in relationship: with one another, with the land, and with the sources of abundance that sustain us. 

In recent years, I’ve been drawn to expressions of gratitude and hospitality that come from Indigenous wisdom—the teachings of theologians like Randy Woodley, whose work on the Harmony Way articulates an earth-centered vision of abundance, reciprocity, and “enoughness.” Woodley refers to gratitude as rooted in respect for and mutual relationship with the land and all creation. It is a way of walking through the world attentive to gifts constantly given, and responsibility for the gifts we, in turn, offer back. 

There is something profoundly resonant about that at Mount Olivet Conference & Retreat Center. Our 151 acres teach us, day after day, that abundance is woven into the fabric of creation. Seeds scatter themselves across the prairie without asking permission. Deer linger at the edge of the woods. Monarchs return to our milkweed year after year. Even in late autumn—when the growing season has ended—the land keeps giving: quiet, rest, space to breathe. 

And yet, as Woodley reminds us, gratitude is never only about receiving. It is also about giving: tending what tends to us; offering care back to the land that has cared so generously for us. This year, I’ve seen that reciprocity embodied in countless ways at the retreat center, like the group of corporate leaders who paused their programming to hike the trails. What began as a break between sessions turned into a kind of grounding, a remembering of their connection with one another, with the land, with something larger than themselves. Gratitude had emerged not through instruction, but through attention to the ground they traversed. 

Another example comes from a project that quietly unfolded behind the scenes this year: the relocation of our honeybees. Our beekeeper, together with our grounds staff, moved the hives to a new home better suited to their health and safety. This work was a form of reciprocity. These bees pollinate our wildflowers, enrich our prairie, and sustain so much life on the property. Tending them well is part of tending the land. Their relocation was a small act of stewardship that ripples far beyond the hives themselves. 

I find myself returning to these stories as reminders that abundance is not something we must create; it is something already present, waiting to be recognized. Gratitude grows from the practice of noticing. And noticing leads naturally to care—for the land, for each other, for the communities we form in this place. 

At Mount Olivet Conference & Retreat Center, abundance is not measured in quantities but in relationships. Each year we witness not only the changing colors of the season but also the gathering of people—families seeking respite, nonprofit leaders dreaming together, teenagers on retreat, volunteers tending our grounds, staff welcoming guests with warmth and delight. Abundance shows up in shared meals, long conversations, silent reflection, and moments of beauty that interrupt our routines. 

As we step more fully into this season, I find myself wondering what it would mean for each of us to practice a gratitude shaped by Indigenous wisdom: a gratitude that acknowledges the Dakota homeland on which we dwell; that honors the land as teacher; that recognizes abundance not as private possession but as shared gift; that moves us toward reciprocity rather than consumption. Perhaps it begins simply—with attention. With walking the trails and noticing what the land is offering. With caring for the small corner of earth or community entrusted to us. With remembering that we are part of a larger story of giving and receiving. 

This season may we hear the invitation to enter into that wider way of gratitude—one that deepens our connection to God, to the land, to one another, and to the abundance already present around us.