A Lighter Way Week 19: Recognizing the Good
Sep 26, 2026I can clearly remember my father sitting down with me when I was only a very young child and sharing with me the story of the Chicago woman, Mrs. O’Leary and her cow.
As the story goes, Mrs. O’Leary was milking her cow when the cow knocked over a kerosene lamp that set her barn blazing and in just a few moments set fire to the city of Chicago. It was on October 10, 1871, when that fire was finally extinguished.
It left behind $200 million worth of property destroyed, at least 300 lives lost, and 1/3 of the city’s population without a home.
We may never know the true origins of that fire. Mrs. O’Leary claims that she was sleeping in her bed when it started.
What we do know is that it was a disaster, beyond description, for the city of Chicago. All disasters are personal. We respond to them by assigning meaning.
Here’s another story.
Alan Morinis writes in Everyday Holiness:
“Once, Rabbi Akiva was walking along the way accompanied by a rooster, a donkey, and a lamp. He came to a certain place and looked for room at the inn, but he was turned away. When that happened, he said, ‘Whatever the All-Merciful does, He does for the good.’ So he went with his rooster, donkey, and lamp and spent the night in an open field. The wind came and put out the lamp, a weasel came and ate the rooster, a lion came and ate the donkey. He said, ‘Whatever the All-Merciful does, He does for the good.’ On that very night, a marauding troop came to that town and took into captivity everyone in the town. Rabbi Akiva was spared. Had his rooster crowed, had the donkey brayed, had the light glowed, he would have been discovered.”
We assign meanings. Some things we are thankful for and others we are not. Why is this so?
Morinis continues: “The Hebrew term for gratitude is hakarat ha’tov, which means, literally, ‘recognizing the good.’ The good is already there. Practicing gratitude means being fully aware of the good that is already yours.”
Gratitude, then, is more than simply being thankful when something good happens. It is the practice of recognizing the good that is already present, even within circumstances we might not have chosen.
In everything that happens, the good is already there.
What makes this possible?
Chicago rose out of the ashes of the Great Fire. No longer a frontier town of wooden structures, it became a renewed modern city, built of steel, glass, and stone. The debris removed from the remains of the fire was shaped into a new shoreline which in later years became Grant Park and Millennial Park.
Building restrictions that emerged in the aftermath of the fire became models for urban developers across the US. And in 1997, the Chicago City Council passed a resolution exonerating Mrs. O’Leary and her cow from all blame.
The good was already there.
Practice:
When something apparently good happens to you, you offer the blessing,
“And that is also for the good.”
And if something bad happens to you, say again:
“And that is also for the good.”
This is not a denial of suffering or an insistence that everything that happens is good. Rather, it is a practice of trust; a willingness to remain open to the possibility that even in what we cannot understand, something good may yet be revealed.
Prayer
Gracious Holy One,
Each and every moment you pour out your love into the containers of our lives. Again and again your blessings flow. And yet we judge those very blessings as good and bad. We desire those which fill our needs and turn away from those that offer the lessons we need to learn. In your mercy, shape us into a people whose only response to your purpose for us is a receptive “Yes” to all that you bring. May our trust in your mercies grow ever stronger. Amen.
Everyday Holiness: The Jewish Spiritual Path of Mussar by Alan Morinis
This nineteenth reflection is by Chuck Wester, graduate of WTC's School of Spiritual Direction.
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