To a Baha’i, every good and righteous action is a form of thanksgiving. We give thanksgiving for rights and privileges when we vote. We give thanksgiving for sight and the human experience when we smile at a stranger. We give thanksgiving for able-bodiedness by working.

It might be a bizarre thing to say, but as a Baha’i I am insanely grateful for taxes. Taxation ensures an opportunity for good education. Taxation makes possible the improvement of civic infrastructures, sustains programs that prevent and eradicate poverty and disease, and funds the military that keeps our shores safe and our homeland defended. Paying taxes with a grateful heart means we value humanity’s wellbeing above our accumulation of wealth.

Apart from civic responsibility, there are a lot of things for me to be grateful for as a Baha’i. I am thankful for the revelation of peace and unity that came from the twin manifestations of my faith, the Báb and Bahá’u’lláh.

I am thankful for the revealed concept of consultation. I am grateful for an international Baha’i community, a community in which every seeker from every faith is unconditionally welcomed.

I am thankful for the administrative order of the faith. I am grateful for my local and national spiritual assemblies, parts of an administrative whole that devotedly oversees the affairs of our growing Baha’i community.

I am grateful to have been brought to the faith by a benevolent, caring and selfless woman, a woman on fire for the cause of Bahá’u’lláh. I am thankful that I am being shown what it means to be a Baha’i from believers new and old, from immediate community members and from those abroad. I am grateful to receive consistent, timely, loving advice and affirmations from the Universal House of Justice. And I am unspeakably grateful for the ability to share my faith with any ear willing to listen.

Abdu’l-Bahá once wrote, “In these times thanksgiving for the bounty of the Merciful One consists in the illumination of the heart and the feeling of the soul. This is the reality of thanksgiving. But, although offering thanks through speech or writings is approvable, yet, in comparison with that, it is but unreal, for the foundation is spiritual feelings and merciful sentiments.”

As Baha’is we give thanks for the countless bounties that we enjoy in this life and will enjoy in the worlds to come, using words if necessary.

Reach columnist Wade Caves at opinion@dailyuw.com.