On Thanksgiving Day

I hope that everyone is spending time embracing peace and togetherness, hope, even in the midst of adversity, faith and gratitude, mercy and compassion - thanks and giving.

I also want to say Happy Hanukkah - I am grateful for the spiritual knowledge and understanding I have learned from our brothers and sisters in the Jewish faith.  It has only strengthened my knowledge of God and my Christian faith.

I'll admit that I am a bit incensed by the media spin about the holiday.  They focus the megaphone and headlines on shopping as stores open on Thanksgiving Day and the Black Friday sales.  Yes, the holiday shopping season is an important part of the season.  It is fun to pick out gifts for friends and steal a deal or two on an item we desire.  The problem is when we put consumerism and greed above the needs of our neighbor, allowing excess and entitlement to guide our intentions.  We all fall into the trap.  Thanksgiving becomes a time of deadlines and pushing and shoving to get ahead in the race.  I entreat us all to take a step back and focus on 'Thanks' and 'Giving.'  Think about the other before the selfish.  Do you really need to shop at The Dollar Store of all places on Thanksgiving? 

That isn't to say that going to the movies or out to eat on this holiday is selfish.  Certain businesses and their employees are geared towards working on this holiday.  I was grateful for the opportunity to serve guests on Thanksgiving when I worked at various restaurants.  Many of the families were displaced or didn't have a kitchen big enough to cook a sandwich, let alone a meal.  I enjoyed being part of their celebration.  I think we cross the line when we place merchandise above people and demand service on a day that minimum wage employees get off to spend with their family.  Most of these employees cannot afford to take a vacation.  They need a day off to have time with their family and time to reflect.  Going into Target, Wal-Mart, Sears or any other chain on Thanksgiving is selfish because it puts consumerism above individual needs and humanity.  I know this is a fine line and is up for much debate. There are exceptions, but I think it is telling when all the major news outlets discuss about the holiday is 'money' and 'consumerism.'

I wish that the media would focus more on the nature of Thanksgiving and the American values it stands for.  It isn't a religious holiday, though I think as a Christian we find the meaning of Thanksgiving - Great and humbling - it is the heart of the Christian ministry (and Jewish) to be Thankful and to Give up ourselves in service.  Thanksgiving is a holiday that though secular is based on more than consumerism and popular culture, it is about the core truce of bringing people together, of all classes and creeds, feeding the hungry, tending the sick, finding hope in the abyss, overcoming bigotry and pride to move forward in humble service and thanks.  It is breaking bread with strangers and friends. 

I am always inspired by the real-life run of the mill, yet extraordinary instances, of people giving up themselves in the holiday season for the other.  In Bozeman MT at the Gallatin Valley Food Bank, an anonymous couple distributed $100 gift cards to homeless, low-income and hard-working, but down on their luck families.  The givers refused acknowledgment, they were merely grateful that these families could have food and sustenance.  We might not all be able to hand over gift cards, but we can feed our neighbors, donating $5 worth of food per grocery trip each week to the food bank is a start.  I don't have a lot of extra money, but I am willing to have a little less to ensure someone else gets the food and sustenance they need.

I read an article a few years back about doctors and dentists having free exams and treatment on Thanksgiving.  In the medical world of cost and lack of concern for the patient, this is hope and a living testament to the call to tend the sick.

Churches and Synagogues coming together to host Thanksgiving Meals to the public is a great celebration of the harvest of the season.  Participants in these dinners come from all walks of life, parishioners to addicts off the street looking for a meal and compassion so they can rise above their trial.  Conversations are told and stories and lessons revealed.  This is the spirit of Thanksgiving that we should all focus on.

It is interesting that this American holiday is celebrated in a colorful array of traditions from Asian nuances to Southern traditions and Northern cuisine, Hawaiian cookouts and Alaskan salmon bakes...the color and tapestry of the holiday, bound in the spirit of thanks and giving, friendship and respect, adds a new dynamic to the celebration - embracing our differences and common core through love and forgiveness, breaking bread and sharing in a humble meal.

There is also of course football (for me it college basketball feast week - I'm a CBB addict); movies, board games and other countless family traditions.

I'll close out this post with a few things that I am grateful for:

1. My mom
2. Our National & State Parks and all the beauty of the earth
3. The food and harvest that sustains us
4. College Basketball
5. God's steadfast love and sure foundation

The list goes on....

Collect from BCP for Thanksgiving:
'Almighty and gracious Father, we give thee thanks for the fruits of the earth in their season and for the labors of those who harvest them.  Make us, we beseech thee, faithful stewards of thy great bounty, for the provision of our necessities and the relief of all who are in need to the glory of thy Name; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen

The Great Thanksgiving - God's call for us to be thankful and actively give...

The Great Thanksgiving:

            At its core the holiday of Thanksgiving is a celebration of thanks.  It is a feast of gratitude. A chance to rejoice in appreciation of the ordinary and extraordinary blessings in our life.  We break bread; feasting in the bounty of nourishment, embracing love, forgiveness, compassion, hope and finding resiliency in test and trial, peace is found in endurance.  The essence of the holiday is warmth, companionship and fullness of spirit.  Then why are so many of us left empty and bitter from this holiday?

            The simple lessons of Thanksgiving are often oppressed by opposing forces.  We get tangled up in the holiday rush, the consumerism shopping demands - that are becoming more sacred in secular society that breaking bread and spending the day with thanks and giving, travel plans, family feuds...the list goes on.  Many of us come to the thanksgiving confounded with dread, angst, betrayal, anger, frustrations, fear and setbacks.  We feel incomplete, empty shells, unsatisfied with our lives.  For some it is financial troubles.  So many cannot afford to a Thanksgiving, or are so strapped that this meal becomes a burden. Seemingly irreparable rifts leave some embittered, clutching anger.  Others are lonely and without friends or family, feel desperate and scared.  Many don’t have a home and are relegated freezing conditions in the encroaching winter.  The list of life’s pressures and conflicts, fragment our soul, weigh down our emotions, tangle our reason, break down our fortitude, confiscate our hope, taint faith and imbue selfish tendencies…it goes on. 

Life is a constant source of trouble.  Suffering is part of the fabric of this earthly existence.  We get bogged down in the impermanence of existence, assuming ‘what’s the point of trying, when life seems futile.’ Instead of being grateful for what we have, even in the midst of adversity, we become cynical creatures, ready to condemn the hopeful and dismiss faith as lunacy.  We prefer to squat in the dark shadows, focusing on shortcomings, while clutching onto anger. 

Even in the depths of despair and uncertainty if we dig beyond the surface, we find things to be grateful for, including the everlasting thanksgiving of Christ.

The act of gratitude isn’t rose colored glasses ignoring life’s catastrophes, rather it is the star that can pierce the darkness, filling our hearts with light and sustaining our souls in time of trial.

 I found gratitude to be its purest form when I’m in the wilderness of life; times when betrayal, heartache, pain, failure, financial trouble…is pulling me under.  I nearly drown, suffocating from the grim disorder and oppressive force of fear and cruelty of the harsh reality of life.  As I am sinking, anchored by doubt, I find a single breath, air to fill my lungs, from simple raw gratitude.  Hope and faith that things might be low, but life is beautiful and worth the fight.   In the end we are refined from trial.  It doesn’t mean that the suffering is enjoyable.  Yet you can find joy in the lessons learned from hardship.   When we are in thick of the storm, the cold winter nights where you nearly freeze, lost in a cloud of snow, it is unfathomable that life will blossom again.  Pain is never desired, but even in calamity we can find blessings and uncover truths.

Many use the metaphor of life being a marathon, not a race.  For me it is a hike, a journey through canyons, lonely and desolate to barren deserts, mountains, thermal basins that scald, to valleys and clear waters.  I am grateful that life is an arduous hike to the top of an electric peak.  It is in the craggy spots I learn to trust and forgive, the valleys nourish the soul with peace, they canyons a doorway out of desperation towards a path of hope.

On life’s trailhead you proceed with joyful trepidation.  At times life is a storm, you get thrust into disaster and unexplainable circumstances – the death of a loved one, addiction, pain of broken dreams, loneliness…we all battle demons.  Yet the clouds, dark and ominous as they appear are merely a façade for the ocean of sky, a foundation of clear blue by day.  At night the moon is a faithful watcher and the stars anchors in the dark abyss of night. 

I’ll admit I’m a worry wart.  I’m always fretting about deadlines and details.  I am anxious about my writing, and that my goals will fail time and again.  I question, ‘what is the point?’  Thanksgiving is a lonely and desolate place at times, yet miraculously each year it is in the angst that I find comfort.  I grow in trust and resilience.  I have been crippled in the past and know weakness.  It took being humbled to serve.  It took having every material possession stolen to understand the great blessings of clothing, food, a car and a place to lay my head. 

You rejoice at life’s purest and simplest moments.  I shout thanks, deep and profound, from the simple act of staring at Bridger Mountains dynamic magnificence set against the fiery Montana sunrise.  The snow, harsh and unyielding, loses its iron grip, and I become thankful for the massive snowpack that will sustain the ecosystem through the heat and dry volatility of summer.

It is on that bridge that you’ll discover compassion, understanding, faith, in gratitude, a new hope is born, cautious, yet defiant.  Gratitude isn’t just about what we possess and receive, although those are important, they don’t fill you up as much as the sustaining power of giving.  Thanks-giving has two missions that work in concert, being thankful and in that gratitude recognizing the call to action to give, by loving your neighbor as yourself.  It is in serving that we are served and in selfless love that we find redemption, understanding and a living hope.

1 Thessalonians 5:18, instructs us to “Give thanks in all circumstances, for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you.”

This is easier said than done.  We anguish, doubt and demand ransom for life’s injustice and sufferings.  How can you be grateful in the midst of a storm?  I’ve learned along my journey that it is gratitude and giving that has allowed me to endure hardship.  It is the healing power of Christ, the lessons of compassion and service to the other before myself that has allowed me to forgive.

At all times praise our creator, who selflessly gave his only son Jesus to redeem us from the burden of sin…Sin is more than the act of offending, it is also the burden of pain and suffering that we cling to, from past mistakes.  It is fragmented splinters and cavities that eat away at our foundation when ignored.  It is becomes less about the wrong committed and more about the destruction of our psyche in holding onto the burden of anger and guilt.  The same can be said for when we’ve been victims of a great loss, pain and deception.

 I am still working through the layers of angst and hurt of past trials.  With each layer I peel back a new understanding, a deeper peace and the ability to trust in Christ.  I give up my burdens to him.  In the process of letting go, I am overcome with gratitude for the gift of the selfless love of the God the Father, Christ Jesus and the guiding power of the Holy Spirit.  It is the sure foundation, a living word and healing presence feeding us with the spiritual food, and real-life lessons of service and thanks to help us navigate the treacherous wilds.  

 In his death we find a new hope in the resurrection, an opportunity to rise above the abyss, filled with the light of His love.  Jesus is the Messiah, preaching about God’s Kingdom on earth.  He sits at the throne in heaven, yet in coming down to earth, he chose to serve with selfless love and compassion.  Jesus core teaching is rooted in service by giving up ourselves to help others, to comfort the least among us and to tend their needs.  Matthew 20:28, “…just as the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many.’

This call to duty is at times uncomfortable.  We are creatures of habit that don’t like to break our shell.  We cower in fear, using it as our source of power.  The truth is that fear paralyzes and brings out the worst in humanity.  We’ve all been in the situation where we’ve seen a homeless beggar on Main Street, cold and hungry.  Some may provide the beggar with food or cash, not taking time to interact with this child of God.  Others mutter under their breath that it is a drunkard and druggie, keeping their distance. We assume that we are too fragile, too broken to help others.  How can we tend the needs of our neighbor, when we cannot help ourselves?  Many build walls, looking for excuses to avoid reaching out to those in need.  We are all culpable of this. 

 I often feel unworthy.  I wonder if writing this is worth the effort.  It is in our weakness we often find our strength.  It is in human fragility and our common experience that we can build bridges and reach out to those in need.  We give.  Thanksgiving is a bridge.  It allows a nurturing opportunity to provide for those in need, to step out of your comfort zone.  For some it might be a donation to the food bank, others go so far as to invite the homeless into their homes for a meal.  Some learn to give their time, because they too lack fortune and food.  They are grateful for what they have been given and given what they can spare without hesitation. 

I don’t have a lot of money this thanksgiving.  In past years, I’ve gotten wound up in pity and anger – I had valid reasons for being upset.  My faith and life journey taught me that embracing gratitude, not delusion, but pure joy for what you have been given and more importantly what you can give makes life worth living.  It is the foundation of thanks and giving that should guide our compass day in and out. 

In the Anglican tradition, we refer to the Eucharist as The Great Thanksgiving.  Eucharist means ‘thanksgiving.’  Attending Thanksgiving service tonight, I was filled with the power of the gift of this ‘Great Thanksgiving.’  It is a living sustenance of faith, hope, redemption, communion of our flesh with the spirit of Christ.  We don’t walk this dark road alone.  Christ selflessly serves us, nourishing our body and spirit.  His teachings demand that we act with mercy, a calling to attend the needs of others.  The healing isn’t in his miracles, as much as the divine nature of giving.  The feeding of thousands, was a miraculous event, showing that God feeds his children and tends the least and the greatest.  Like the manna in the desert, the Hebrews struggled with the sojourn out of Egypt – yet God fed the Hebrew people, guiding them out of the unknown.  It wasn’t easy.  Many longed to return to ‘Egypt.’  Don’t we often wish to return to our own ‘Egypt,’ fleeing to the known, even if it is a dangerous place, unforgiving and merciless?’ It takes learning first hand through experience to turn away from old habits and embrace a new life of gratitude and giving.  Perhaps that is why it is so hard for the wealthy to lack the depth of gratitude and giving that the least exhibit.  Christ calls on us to not only receive the gift of spiritual nourishment and blessings with gratitude, but to give selflessly.

 “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.  Blessed are the merciful for they will receive mercy. (Matthew 5-6)”

The Great Thanksgiving celebrates the selfless love of God in Christ. Even God, begot a son in the flesh to endure the human experience, including suffering and death. The Eucharist is the remembrance of the communion of the Last Supper.  Like thanksgiving, the Passover feast is a time of celebration and jubilant gratitude, the promise that God would spare the Hebrews in Egypt from the tenth plague, and a living testimony of redemption out of suffering, a pardon from death. 

Jesus and his disciples shared in a humble feast in a borrowed Upper Room.  The celebration of Passover was a time of rejoicing, it was also a time of anguish, pain and even fear as Jesus knew that he was going to be betrayed and abandoned, turned over for death.  Yet in spite of knowledge of the impending suffering, Jesus serves, offering a living hope and testimony through the institution of ‘The Lord’s Supper.’

The Great Thanksgiving in the Book of Common Prayer starts with thanks and giving.

Celebrant: “The Lord be with you.”

People:  “And also with you.”

The power of giving the power and knowledge of Christ is truly the greatest gift of all.  It is the sustaining force that will never fail, if we trust and embrace Christ, accepting the kindling fire of the spirit.  A power that fuels and burns, without scarring.

Celebrant: “Lift up your hearts.”

People: “We lift them to the Lord.”

Celebrant: “Let us give thanks to the Lord our God.”

People: “It is right to give him thanks and praise.”

            Christ gives us the strength to be lifted out of despair into thanks and giving, into hope of redemption.  Hope isn’t a whimsical wish in the spiritual context, it is a living hope, a trust of things promised will be received and the kingdom of God is here and is coming – it is constant and unending.

            “It is right, and a good and joyful thing, always and everywhere to give thanks to you, Father Almighty, Creator of heaven and earth.”

            What encouraging words, backed by the real power of God’s gift of the Holy Spirit.  Through knowledge and the spirit of Christ we are grateful and also called to act as Christ would have us, ‘to love our neighbor as ourselves,’ and to live a life of thanksgiving.  What greater gift is there than giving up your life to serve?  Christ made the ultimate sacrifice in giving himself over to death.  Yet in dying he conquered death.  Life was born out of that suffering, resurrected.

            As the bread is broken by the Celebrant we are reminded that the bread and wine are ‘The Gifts of God for the People of God.  Take them in remembrance that Christ died for you, and feed on him in your hearts by faith with thanksgiving.”

            Thanksgiving, let us keep the feast with GREAT Thanksgiving.  Let’s find strength to overcome obstacles by observing the blessings, small and meek, yet mighty as a breath to fill our lungs with air to breathe.  Thankfully embrace the other half of this holiday, giving a part of yourself in selfless love and compassion, stepping out of comfort zones to tend with mercy the marginalized, the downtrodden, fill the hopeless with God’s sure promise – light pierces the dark.  Find joy in the company of neighbors and friends, listening and lifting their burdens with love and the peace of spirit. 

            I’ll conclude this somewhat rambling entry with the (benediction) closing prayer in The Great Thanksgiving. 

            “Eternal God, heavenly Father, you have graciously accepted us as living members of your Son our Savior Jesus Christ, and you have fed us with spiritual food in the Sacrament of his Body and Blood.  Send us now into the world in peace, and grant us strength and courage to love and serve you with gladness and singleness of heart; through Christ our Lord. Amen.”

           

Let us go forth with the resolve, even if we are in doubt of faith, to embrace gratitude and Jesus's call to serve.  It can be something as simple as donating food in the Food Bank bins at the local grocery to giving time at a local organization such as a museum or a women's crisis center, taking time to mentor a student in need of tutoring or be a friend to the lonely...use your talents and passion to help. Take time every day to count your blessings - at least one and be joyful in it.

Thanks and Giving shouldn't be relegated to one day per year, but serve as a model of life we aspire to actively pursue day in and out, in dark storms and in abundance.