Gratitude: Enzo The Baker

I’ll be out of town visiting the in-laws next week when Thanksgiving rolls around and probably won’t have time to write anything thoughtful, so I thought I’d get my Thanksgiving thoughts out of the way ahead of time. Here is part one:


One of my all-time favorite movie scenes occurs fairly early in Francis Ford Coppola’s iconic classic, The Godfather (for what it’s worth, as good as it is, I think that The Godfather is slightly overrated, but I love this scene).

Vito Corleone, Don of the Corleone crime family and the “Godfather” of the movie’s title, is in the hospital, having barely survived an attempt on his life. His youngest son, Michael, comes to visit him, but discovers that his father is unguarded and all by himself, and realizes that another attempt is about to be made on his life.

Michael calls his older brother on the phone and tells him to send reinforcements, and then hides his father in another hospital room.

About this time, Enzo the Baker arrives.

Earlier in the movie, the Godfather had used his considerable influence to take care of some immigration issues that Enzo was struggling with, and now the young Sicilian has come to pay his respects to the ailing Don.

Michael tries to warn Enzo of the danger he is in, but Enzo refuses to leave:

“You better get out of here, Enzo, there's gonna be trouble.”

“If there is trouble, I stay here to help you. For your father. For your father.”

The two men go outside and wait on the front steps, posing as bodyguards. A car of would-be assassins pulls up, but confused by the appearance of guards where they weren’t expecting to find any, they drive on.

Scared to death, Enzo begins to shake and struggles to light a cigarette. He is out of place in the world of organized crime, but a debt of gratitude has compelled an ordinary man to act in an extraordinary fashion, risking his life to save someone else.

• • •

We talk a lot about being thankful, or grateful, at this time of year, but I wonder if we don’t often mistake appreciation for gratitude.

Sure, we’re glad that we are able to gather with family, and we appreciate the fact that we have a lot of blessings—we certainly wouldn’t want to try living without those blessings—but often that’s as far as it goes.

But gratitude goes a step further than appreciation. From Wikipedia:

“Gratitude is the substance of a heart ready to show appreciation, or thankfulness; it is not simply an emotion, which involves a pleasant feeling that can occur when we receive a favor or benefit from another person, but rather the combination of a state of being and an emotion; often accompanied by a desire to thank them, or to reciprocate for a favour they have done for you.”

Gratitude is a feeling of appreciation accompanied by a desire to act. It was a deep feeling of gratitude that drove Enzo to disregard his own safety in order to help the man who had helped him.

In the second half of this post, we’ll look at one of my favorite stories from the Old Testament, and then consider the theological implications of gratitude.

Golden

Major League Baseball’s Gold Gloves, awarded to the best defensive players at each position, were given out this week.

Several of the awards came as no surprise—Greg Maddux set a record by winning his 17th, and Andruw Jones won his 10th in a row—but I was shocked to discover that Atlanta’s Jeff Francoeur was among the recipients.

Francoeur has what is very possibly the best throwing arm in the league, and that certainly helped his defensive reputation, but I never really thought of his glove work as being any better than a little below slightly above average.

Maybe it just goes to show that when you watch guys play game after game after game, you don’t fully appreciate how good they are.

Or maybe it just shows that Gold Gloves don’t always mean a whole lot.

Congratulations Are In Order…

…to my brother, who turned in his dissertation this week.

He’ll still have to make a few revisions and defend it, but he is now one giant step closer to receiving his doctorate in history. Here’s hoping he doesn’t have his future students refer to him as “Dr. Dockery.” That would be highly unfortunate.

I’m already the least educated of the three Dockery children, and now my brother has managed to widen that gap even further.

Oh well. I’ll just have to content myself with the fact that I am younger than him and better at Home Run Derby.

Fayetteville In Fall

There are some things that I really like about living in Northwest Arkansas and other things that I don’t like as much, but certainly one of my favorite things about living here is how pretty it gets in autumn.

I went out last week and took several pictures around town. I’ll post some of the better ones, and for today, here are some highlights from around our apartment:

Oak trees are some of my favorite fall trees.

This shot was greatly aided by the setting sun.

A view of a pond and fountain through some close-up leaves.

Giant flag with the hills in the background.