Thanksgiving Reflection

November 19, 2006
Westminster Unitatian Church
Rev. Barbara Fast


A mother invited some people to dinner. At the table, she turned to their six-year-old daughter and said "Would you like to say the blessing?"
"I wouldn't know what to say," the girl replied.
"Just say what you hear Mommy say," the wife answered.
The daughter bowed her head and said,
"Lord, why on earth did I invite all these people to dinner?"

Thanksgiving is an important family holiday for us. It is the one holiday, where each of us, Jewish, Christian, Atheist, Theist, Catholic, UU, where  all family members can celebrate together.

One Thanksgiving we went to dinner at a cousins, sat around a beautiful table, family dishes on display, glistening glasses waited to be filled. We sat down and began the meal. There was no blessing. We missed it. We missed the connection, the pause, the letting go of other concerns.  I went home complaining about what was missing.

It was later that I realized what I was really missing. In our family it was Jonathan’s mom Bette who did Thanksgiving. It was tradition. Bette made the holiday a holy day.  The year before she had died.  It was not the blessing that was truly missed.  We missed Bette.  

At holiday time we are invited not only to offer hospitality and to receive it , we are invited to celebrate and give thanks even when family life leaves us cold, our tempers are too hot, our hopes to high, wallets too small, hearts too tender and life too hard, body aches and the spirit is running dry.

Instead of giving away recipes for pumpkin pie we should give away our expectations, for they are recipes for disappointment.

A change in a tradition, an alienation, divorce, illness, death, can make it difficult to call up gratitude.  A beloved surrenders to death and we move in a muffled fog.  A parent fails and forgets, and we struggle to find a new way as we become both parent and child. Our own health fails us and we stumble and wonder who am I now?  A partner is emotionally distant and the journey feels so lonely. A child struggles and we don’t know how to help. A job is lost , business is slow, we get tangled in insecurity and doubt. Terror and war threaten safety and peace of mind surrenders to fear.

Grief can blind us to the blessings around us.   We need time to grieve, to feel out of sync with the world, for reconciliation to our lives. That is not a calendar over which we have voluntary control.

Holidays and holy days are now upon us. What is our religious task?
Let me pass this onto you from our Hymnal, by Max Coots.

When love is felt or fear is known
When holidays and holydays and such times comes
When anniversaries arrive by calendar or consciousness
When seasons come, as seasons do, old and known, yet somehow new.
When lives are born or people die
When something sacred’s sensed in soil or sky
Mark the time
Respond with thought or prayer or smile or grief
Let nothing slip between the fingers of the mind
For these are holy things we will not cannot find again.

I guess it all depends on what you are determined to harvest from this holiday.  Let us harvest from our faith life and hope not fear and despair, despite all the sorrow that living manages to heap upon a human being.
As Wendell Berry wrote: Be joyful even though you have considered all the facts.

This year, we will be dining a the home of Jonathan’s ex wife and her husband, with most of the children and our grand baby Max  who has three grandmas’ and three grandpas. Each year, each season, brings new life.  

This year as I pull up my chair to the thanksgiving table, where so many I have known and loved no longer sit, I will remember them in love in all their humanity. I will give thanks for those I now am invited to sit with. And for the new life that always comes, no matter the season. When we give a moment to give thanks, we make the moment sacred, it becomes a holy time of day.

May we find and mark the holy moments in our lives, this season and all our days. This year what ever table we pull up our chairs this Thanksgiving, let it be in Thanksgiving.  

Copyright Barbara Fast 2006
May be used with attribution.


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