"THANK YOU"

“THANK YOU”

            “If the only prayer you ever say in your whole life is ‘Thank you,” that would be enough.”  That quote from the 13^th century known as Meister Eckhart  seems appropriate in this week of Thanksgiving, with all our ambiguity about the holiday, and with many of us dreading visiting family members whose political views are different from ours.  The holiday in America originated in 1789 when George Washington proclaimed it so after the Constitution was ratified.  Although Thomas Jefferson did not celebrate it, many folk did.  Soon after the huge Union victory at Gettysburg in 1863,  President Abraham Lincoln declared a national day of Thanksgiving to be celebrated on the last Thursday in November.  That held until President Franklin Roosevelt changed it to the 4^th Thursday in November, which is where it stands now. 

            Most Anglos in my generation grew up with the pleasing images of Native Americans and Anglos eating together in peace at the first Thanksgiving.  As we know, the reality was much different, and once I learned that alternate reality as a young adult, Thanksgiving has never been quite the same.  It was one demarcation of Anglo self-congratulation on our having accomplished so much in such a rigid and fierce world.  Unable and unwilling to name the backs of the ones upon whom we built our “kingdom,” we have assumed that Thanksgiving is a national holiday to be revered by all who love America.  I am noticing this year for the first time that Thanksgiving is about America and not just about gratitude in general.  I guess that I have been a dunce and have not noticed how much of American religion is built on Thanksgiving.  Out of the hardscrabble of life, we of Anglo heritage have built a new nation in the West, a “city upon a hill,” as Puritan minister John Winthrop once called it in the 1620’s. 

            To paraphrase Robert Frost's poem "Birches," let no power hear my misgivings and swift me away to a land of starvation and famine.  Indeed, Robert Frost is a prime example of this issue.  In his poem “The Gift Outright” the first line is “The land was ours before we were the land’s.” Published in 1923 and also read at the inaugural of John Kennedy as President in 1961, Frost expresses this sense of Anglo entitlement that is at the core of Thanksgiving.  But, as I was saying, let no power misunderstand me and take me away.  I am a reforming Anglo, but the power of Thanksgiving is rooted deeply in me, from gathering with family and friends to the good smells of food cooking to the holiday from school and work, to the sense that there is possibility at the heart of life.  My mother was a big Thanksgiving fan (and even bigger fan of Christmas!), so it is imprinted in me.  As I write this, we are in Michigan with our family. I just asked my granddaughter Zoe what she liked about Thanksgiving, and she said “The food – yes, family, too – but definitely the food.  I love the food!”

            Yet I must return to the Meister Eckhart quote and refine it with a quote from the great philosopher Shug Avery in Alice Walker’s Pulitzer Prize novel “The Color Purple.”  When the abused and defeated Celie is looking for a new vision, Shug comes along and begins to lift her spirit and her imagination. As they are walking through a field one day, Shug urges Celie to note the vast array of beauty in a world that seems engulfed in ugliness.  Shug puts it this way:  “I think it pisses God off if you walk by the color purple in a field somewhere and don’t notice it.”  That book helped to change my life, too, and I also believe that it offers a window into a new vision of Thanksgiving. 

            At the heart of our lives should be this attitude of gratitude.  I hate to put “should” with “gratitude,” but in my own life, I have found that seeking to practice the attitude of gratitude can begin to shift the way we orient ourselves to life, to one another, and to ourselves.  I wake up each day and seek to feel grateful for the day that I have been given, even if I dread it greatly.  If I’m not feeling grateful, I seek to locate the source of the blockage and examine its power in my life.  Most of the time it works to lessen the sense of anxiety.  So, wherever we are geographically and spiritually in this week of Thanksgiving, let us remember that one prayer and the color purple.   Let us say “Thank You!”