3 0 S p i r i t ua l i t y S t u d i e s 2 - 2 Fa l l 2 0 1 6 someone a particular skill, talent, kindness, or quality. I then express the meaning that this person has to me, his or her environment, or even as I observe it relating to another person (as I noted with friends Lorraine and Ron). I argue in this paper that expression is vital to making meaning. Acknowledgement is essential for the acknowledger because he or she develops the ability to recognize and appreciate the importance of others in ways that celebrate who and what they are right now (not what they ought to be). Acknowledgement is similarly essential for the acknowledgee because he or she feels seen, appreciated, and has an augmented understanding of his or her meaning in the world. I will continue this acknowledgement project. However, in its next iteration, I will make changes. I will acknowledge more family members and more close friends. I intend to conduct the subsequent iteration(s) of this project with additional courage and daring to make myself more vulnerable (Brown 2012) in expressing my awe of others. I will also set aside a semester in which I acknowledge exclusively students, and find ways to connect with every student enrolled in my courses. Educational psychology focusing on motivation (e.g., Schunk, Pintrich and Meece 2014) will be of particular importance in this iteration of the project. Further, I am presently conducting a research project involving participants’ experiences in acknowledging others, thus significantly expanding the body of scholarly literature on the practice of acknowledgement. A particular challenge with this experiment is that it is very difficult – if not impossible – to quantify the changes experienced by means of acknowledgement. My life has changed, the lives of the people I acknowledged changed, and the lives of individuals with whom we all interact changed as well. As a scholar and social scientist, I am tempted to at least attempt to measure and assess changes in context of an experiment. Given the nebulous changes and depth of responses on the part of both myself and recipients, I suggest that a deeper understanding of acknowledgement is to be found not via quantification, but in engaging in the practice and focusing more on feelings of connection, understanding, and finding meaning in one’s life. Research suggests that people are more apt to behave in socially responsible ways when they think others take notice (Ruvinsky 2014). Having done this experiment, it appeared that many of my students, colleagues, and friends felt as if others did not notice their contributions (at least as much as they would have liked). As the author of 148 letters of acknowledgement, I attest that my own feelings of being noticed were augmented; I became more aware of behaving in ways that would warrant an acknowledgement from someone else. In this manner, acknowledgement is much more holistic than is gratitude; the former recognizes the individual for who and what they are, while the latter easily falls prey to hierarchical relationships and a focus on deeds or tasks. Acknowledgement is a spiritual act. It finds and communicates the connections between and amongst people. It recognizes the reverent “Thou” as Buber (1937/1970) describes, and facilitates relationships between and amongst individuals that are not hierarchical, but rather, celebrate relationships of equality. The equality demonstrated by acknowledgement is not based on how one contributes to outcome or results, and is not based upon one person’s seniority and praise of another’s accomplishments. Acknowledgement is found when the interconnectedness and common humanity to be found in subject-subject relationships is seen and expressed. Mediated communication is by practice an imperfect means of expression, though I suggest that when one acknowledges another, meaning is not just expressed, but also made and felt. It is then that not just the “music between the notes” (Goodall 1996), but also an entire chorus, can be heard.
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