Reflection - Thanksgiving

This Thanksgiving is unlike any Thanksgiving that we have known.

Thanksgiving is a day for gathering at the table to give thanks with our family, but many families are not gathering—at this Table or the family table this year due to Covid.

Many families are also finding it hard to give thanks this year with the rise of Covid deaths, the rise of unemployment and the increase of racial violence.

There’s a line in one of the poems of W.H. Auden that says “Persuade us to rejoice.”

We need someone to persuade us to rejoice and give thanks this Thanksgiving

That’s what Paul seeks to do in his letter to the Colossians. Paul says, “Dedicate yourselves to thankfulness”

Paul is reminding us that we have a vocation, a calling, not as poets, but as Christians which means dedicating ourselves to thankfulness. It’s a calling to persuade others to rejoice, to point out to them reasons to give thanks.

That’s not an easy in a world that’s so divided or even in our own families that may be divided. It’s not easy to give thanks on this day when we can’t gather at the same table with our family or for families where there is an empty chair due to Covid or other reason.

Walter Brueggeman speaks of the numbness this can create in us. We can become numb to the pain and suffering of others. We can become numb to the needs of others even in our own family. Numbness makes it hard to find reason to rejoice and give thanks.

That’s why Brueggeman titled his book “Here Comes the Poet.” We need to open our ears and hearts to the call of the poet and the call of Paul persuading us to rejoice and give thanks even in these times to break thru the numbness we may be feeling.

Three infinitives can help us do that: The first is “To cultivate.”

If we hope to harvest thankfulness we need to cultivate it.

Henri Nouwen tells the story of visiting the homes of poor families in Peru and Bolivia. What he remembers most were the words spoken to him when he entered their home. They said “thanks for coming.” He said those people were poor in many ways, but they were rich in gratitude. They knew how to cultivate an attitude of thankfulness.

“Dedicate your life to thankfulness,” Paul tells us. He’s telling us to cultivate thankfulness by dedicating yourself to give/say thanks each day to your spouse, your child, those at work and school. Let people know you appreciate them. It will persuade them to rejoice. And then at the end of your day cultivate the practice of reviewing your day in prayer and give thanks to God for the blessings/graces of the day

Cultivating thankfulness in our lives will lead to a harvest of thanksgiving.

The second infinitive is “to recognize gifts.”

That’s captured in Tolkien’s short story “the Leaf by Niggle.”

It’s the story of a man who spends his life painting a landscape focusing on one tree. The man dies before finishing the painting. After he dies he finds himself standing before that same landscape. When he sees it he spreads his arms out and proclaims “It’s a gift.”

Dedicating ourselves to thankfulness means opening our arms in this life to all of life and recognizing it as gift. It means opening our arms to our family, to those outside our families and to those we have closed our arms to and recognizing them as gifts. It means also opening our arms even to pain and suffering and even Covid to recognize there is gift in all of this to be discovered.

The third infinitive is “to share.”

On the Day of Judgement, when we gather around God’s heavenly table, we will be asked if we extended our arms to those in need, if we shared our blessings with others.

To share is what it means to dedicate ourselves to thankfulness.

The Rabbi Abraham Heschel wrote that gratitude is the place where heaven and earth will meet.

What will make this the most memorable Thanksgiving is not Covid, but rather if heaven and earth meets in your heart in a prayer of Gratitude.

If you have a brief faith reflection on today’s reading that you would like to share, please send it to me at deaconruss@holyspiritunoh.org.