Table Grace for Nonbelievers

Plenty to be grateful for

In my atheist household, we have a little ritual to replace prayer before meals. I’m sharing it partly in case some of you would like to try it, partly as a clear example of what I’m talking about when I say that atheists could use more rituals. Atheists don’t have much going on in the way of rituals. In fact, plenty of atheists are hostile to the idea, or at least used to be when we were younger. We don’t like rituals because they’re irrational. But now it turns out that most of how we see the world is irrational, and rituals are useful things for humans who know how to use them. The birthday cake comes with a ritual; and it’s good, irrational fun. Counting down to the new year is another secular ritual, as are weddings and funerals.  Here’s a simple, heathen-friendly ritual from my household.

At my family dinner table, before we eat, each of us says something that we’re grateful for. We call it “saying our gratefuls”.

“I’m grateful that I got rid of a bunch of my old books,” someone might say.

“I’m grateful it stopped raining today.”

“I’m grateful for old friends.”

The practice of praying before eating has a significant real-world effect even if there’s no God listening. It focuses everyone’s attention on the same thing. It marks the beginning of a shared meal. It might remind people to feel gratitude, a feeling that most of us could use more of in our lives. Since my family doesn’t believe in God, we don’t pray, but we “say our gratefuls.”

Visitors join right in. Prayers can be divisive, sometimes even when it’s two different sorts of Christians at the table. Religion is tied up with identity, so divisiveness is basically built in. But anyone can say what they’re grateful for and appreciate what others say. Believers and nonbelievers can say their gratefuls side by side. Sometimes visitors thank God or Jesus, and I’m glad they feel comfortable doing it their way.

In theory, praying before a meal could encourage a sense of gratitude. In practice, however, saying grace is often done by rote. It can be so by-the-book that it doesn’t stir up much of a feeling. At the dinner table I grew up with, a child said grace quickly rather than with feeling. The sooner you finished the prayer, the sooner you ate. Saying gratefuls, on the other hand, can take a bit of time because each person speaks in turn rather than all at once. Nothing is rote. The extra time that gratefuls take may be a feature, not a bug. Sharing a meal is itself a powerful ritual. Steven Pinker says that it promotes a feeling of unity. A longer pre-meal ritual helps people prepare psychologically for a shared meal among family and friends.

Where rote prayers are general, gratefuls are personal. You generate your own statement; no one hands you a script. Everyone listens to each person in turn. When a group of people recite a rote prayer or listen to one person say grace, most of those people contribute nothing. When the people gathered around a table say their gratefuls, on the other hand, each person contributes something unique to the ritual, and everyone else pays attention to them while they do it.

As a game designer, I inevitably have some rules of thumb for how to do gratefuls “right”. First, you can’t repeat what someone else says. That rule is always fun when someone gets scooped, and they have to come up with a new grateful on the spot. Second, you should say a grateful that not everyone could say. That rule makes sure that each person is being personal and not abstract. “I’m grateful for old friends” is OK, but “I’m grateful that John and I took the same chemistry class in college” is more personal. Third, guests have to go first. That’s a joke rule that I spring on guests to get a laugh. Guests don’t have to go first. In fact, there are no rules for what your grateful can or can’t be. I like people not to repeat themselves, and I like people to be personal, but there’s not Pope of Gratitude to lay down laws one way or another. Just speak from the heart.

The reason that religious people do rituals is that rituals actually do work. That is, they have real-world effects, even if their supernatural efficacy is overestimated. Today, many secular people have jettisoned rituals because now we know that those rituals don’t provide supernatural benefits after all. There’s room in the lives of secular people, however, for natural rituals. In fact, we ought to be able to dream up better rituals than ever.

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Here’s an earlier post about rituals: Welcome Ceremony at Burning Man