Thanks Be To These
- Details
- Created on Sunday, 20 November 2011 00:00
- Written by Elaine Beth Peresluha
Please note that this is the written text from which Elaine speaks extemporaneously. The words will not match what you hear on Sunday mornings. To hear exactly what is said please go to our podcasts of Sunday's sermons.
Thanksgiving is such a unique holiday, partly because of nostalgic memories, partly because it is uncomplicated. No challenging theological construct here, no confession of sins required, no acceptance of salvation. no long lists of gifts to buy or greeting cards to mail. For much Organic turkey or tofurky, brined or not is about as complicated as it gets. Thanksgiving is an escape from whatever fills the rest of our lives–a long weekend to indulge our fantasies of simplicity, of family, and food.
There are those who are without family or who are far from their families. Many find Thanksgiving to be a lonely time, a time of mourning loss, and I know Native Americans and European Americans at Plymouth Massachusetts and other tribal gatherings will protest the rituals, offended by the repetition of misconceptions, the myths of Pilgrim and Native American solidarity as if there was no brutality or injustice in our history.
Then there are the awkward moments–Ex wives, ex husbands, Uncle John who loudly supports Rick Perry sits next to cousin George’s new boyfriend, fair wage and collective bargaining activist for the International Association of machinists union–who is saying Grace? It was a tough call at my family table–agnostics, Catholics, Episcopalians and Jews all gathered around, hungry, the turkey poised, succulent, waiting to fulfill its dharma. I think maybe my call to Unitarian Universalist ministry first whispered to me when eyes closed and waiting, I heard, Elaine, would you say GRACE?”.
Somewhere between the nostalgia and the tension, the history, fantasies and expectations, Thanksgiving carries a profound opportunity.
This is one day we are invited to practice giving thanks–everything else wiped off the calendar, a moment, a whole day. Here. Practice something important.
In 1990, I was the student minister in Brewster, MA. The Rev. Peter Fleck, a lay preacher who heeded a call to ministry after some forty years in international banking, was one of my supervisors. I was in the midst of a messy divorce, uncertain if I was going to remain in seminary, if I was going to keep a roof over my daughters' heads when, in our weekly staff meeting, I was given the opportunity to preach the Sunday before Thanksgiving–My nose curled, my lips went down…
I was feeling less than thankful about my life circumstance, and quite uninspired by the prospect of saying anything of meaning Sunday morning. After I had completed my whining during check in, Peter leaned over to me, put his wrinkled and gnarled 80 something year old hand on mine, winked at me with a wry old smile and whispered, in his delightful worldly Dutch accent, "Remember. The pilgrims weren't thankful that they survived, they survived because they were thankful."
Being thankful is an action we practice. Gratitude is the gift–the results of our practice.
In her book "In the Beginning", Karen Armstrong notes that God, after working to create heaven and earth in six days, takes a day off. Being omnipotent and inexhaustible, God does not take the day off to rest because of tiredness or overwork–God chooses to take time to reflect on creation. God created the Sabbath for what Armstrong calls a "temporal sanctuary" a day of reflection from which our ordinary labors cease. For Mircea Eliade, an historian of religion, holidays and feasts are sacred times in which we participate in a transcendent realm. He writes, "Humanity feels the need to plunge periodically into this sacred and indestructible time. It is sacred time that makes possible the other time, ordinary time, the profane duration in which every human life can take its course."
Every year Thanksgiving Day is proclaimed and Bling! Here it comes! The fourth Thursday of November. Give thanks. Practice. The day says, “Begin or continue. Learn how to give thanks.”
Being thankful is an art. It is a discipline, it is a skill that is learned and requires practice. We can express thanks today for the trees, for the earth, for the snow, for our loved ones, for this space that we worship in. That is an action we take. Choosing to act thankful stretches our hearts and minds to the elusive possibility of experiencing gratitude, that deep, mindful connection with abundance. Gratitude is the profound result discovered through vulnerability, humility, and sincerity. It is not something we create or evoke. It is a gift bestowed, the unsolicited fruit of our practice of giving thanks. It is–grace.
It is easy to express thanks when life is good, when things are humming. But when one loses a job, a loved one, a relationship, or when one must learn to live with a life changing diagnosis, "Thank you" is not the phrase that immediately comes to mind. Even though we do not feel thankful when our hearts are broken and our dreams are dashed we can, as they say in 12 step programs, "act as if". It does not matter how we feel, it only matters how we act. Isn’t that what human maturation is about–acting with intention rather than reacting out of our emotions?
It was during the most dismal days of the Civil War that President Lincoln declared a day of national Thanksgiving, trying to engage this divided nation in something that would bind us together and restore faith in the presence of a divine power of creation. He made his proclamation only months after tens of thousands had died in the battle of Gettysburg. The end of the bloody war was nowhere in sight. The country was in shambles. It was something more sublime than politics that led the war weary president to urge this nation to rest and be thankful. He reinstated a very old and perennial message that can be found throughout human history and in all faith traditions: the need to take time to reflect on life's blessings and to give thanks. Lincoln’s poignant proclamation reminds us that it is in the midst of our darkest days we most need to set aside time to reflect on the ultimate source of our being and express our thankfulness.
When I was growing up I had a best friend, Deborah. I often joined Deborah and her family for supper. Whenever I ate at Deborah's house, her father said grace. “For what we are about to receive may we be truly thankful.” Her father said this prayer before each meal, “for what we are about to receive may we be truly thankful.” Deborah grew up with this prayer and never really gave it much thought. A prayer of thanksgiving is fitting before the evening meal.
But, this Jewish prayer was not a simple prayer of thanksgiving. In reality, this grace Deborah’s father recited every night was a prayer of petition. Not “For what we are about to receive we are truly thankful,” but, “for what we are about to receive may we be truly thankful.” This prayer was not about giving thanks but about mindfully, humbly asking, appealing to God, for the ability to give thanks.
Saying “Thank you.” comes hard to the person smack dab in the middle of the dark night of the soul, or to any of us when we can look around and see a global society ravaged by war, hate, and prejudice and injustice–an earth spoiled by materialism, greed and reckless development. How can one honestly acknowledge the richness of being alive in the face of such depth and breadth of human suffering? The human irony is, that it is precisely when the night is the darkest that we most need to reach for gratitude.
What I didn’t know when I sat around Deb’s table and listened to her father, was that Deb’s brother, Robert, two years before, had suffered and died from leukemia. Mr. Briggs had spoken that grace every night throughout Robert’s illness and death–“For what we are about to receive, may we be truly grateful.”
There is a courageous moment of appreciation difficult to reach for from the depth of pain and suffering. When we say “thank you” we are humbly acknowledging our own incompleteness, our vulnerability and possibility. An acknowledgement able to crack open the reservoir of gratitude and hope planted in us the day we are born–that place, always full, always alive–waiting for us to ask, in anticipation of our healing, “For what I am about to receive, may I be truly grateful.” In that moment, from a place much deeper, from a hidden and wordless Radiance borrowed from some near, timeless, all the angels of our universe burst into song–singing the glory of our world, the beauty of our life and the love that is endless, available, and ours.
For Mr. Briggs, the only way to bear the weight of Robert’s death was to continually ask for the ability to be thankful for all Robert had given them, and for what his family hoped they would someday receive–peace and understanding.
In the darkest moments of our souls it is sometimes difficult to find that heart place, to release the angels that will fly from our sorrow, our fear, our shame.
It is our human blessing and our curse–the dark and the light that brings us to the fullness of being alive. The art of giving thanks offers the possibility of hearing the fullness of Life's sacred voice in unexpected places.
This Thursday, seize the opportunity. Do not let the day slip away without honest, self-conscious reflection on both the best and the worst in your life. At home, alone, or with family you love, with family that challenges you or with a gathering of familiars, remember. The possibility of hearing the fullness of Life's sacred voice in unexpected places lies in the radical giving of thanks. Abraham Lincoln knew, Peter Fleck knew, Mr. Briggs knew–Grace breathes through the holes in our lives. Let us remember their examples, let us take seriously the Sabbath of Thanksgiving and on Thursday, rest, and for what we are about to receive, may we be truly thankful.