Read a Beliefnet column that describes Christian, Jewish and Muslim perspectives on gratitude and links to Buddhist and Hindu views.

The summer 2007 issue of Greater Good magazine, published by the Greater Good Science Center at the University of California, Berkeley, surveys new research on gratitude.

The Rev. Kathy Black, a United Methodist minister, is author of A Healing Homiletic: Preaching and Disability and Signs of Solidarity: Ministry With Persons Who Are Deaf, Deafened and Hard of Hearing. She is Kennedy Professor of Homiletics & Liturgics at Claremont School of Theology in California.

W. Daniel Blair is assistant professor of American Sign Language and director of the Center for Deaf Education at California Baptist University in Riverside. His dissertation was about theological education and disability.

Craig Rennebohm founded the Mental Health Chaplaincy in Seattle in 1987. The chaplaincy provides services for the mentally ill, including homeless people, and training for congregations to support families experiencing mental illness. Rennebohm now trains others for mental health chaplaincy.

The Rev. Susan Gregg-Schroeder is a United Methodist minister in San Diego and coordinator of Mental Health Ministries, an effort that grew from her own experience of depression. She is the author of a paper, “Mental Illness and Families of Faith: How Churches Can Respond.”

Daniel N. McIntosh is a psychology professor at the University of Denver. He has studied autism and the role of religion in family coping with a disabled child and is supervising research on religion and perceptions among parents of children with disabilities.

Deborah B. Creamer is director of accreditation and institutional evaluation at the Association of Theological Schools in Pittsburgh. She is the author of Disability and Christian Theology: Embodied Limits and Constructive Possibilities. Creamer is a former co-chair of the Religion and Disability Studies Group for the American Academy of Religion.

Monica A. Coleman is associate professor of constructive theology and African-American religions at Claremont School of Theology in Claremont, Calif. Among her interests is disability theology.