Thanksgiving/Thanksgrieving ANS

Here is a little message for Thanksgiving, bittersweet though it is....
Find it here:  http://www.facebook.com/home.php?sk=lf#!/note.php?note_id=461675776511&id=748440090   
--Kim

Thanksgiving/Thanksgrieving

by Sean Dennison on Wednesday, November 24, 2010 at 6:00pm

Each year this day comes around and I am torn. I believe in gratitude, I really do. I have so much to be thankful for: great kids, family, partner, puppies, friends; a job I love in a congregation full of great people; hand-knit rainbow socks keeping my feet warm; a new massage chair given by generous people I barely know; a house with great light and a view that soothes my soul; satisfying service to my beloved seminary; a world that keeps me astounded and grounded with its beauty and need; people that challenge me and help me grow into the person I yearn to be; good health that I have not earned; sacred connections with so many and so much that I would call G-d. Gratitude abounds.

 

And yet, this day is also a day of stories created to obscure the truth and replace it with a fairy tale. The Thanksgiving story of Pilgrims and Indians is not true, friends. It is a fiction. It exists to make us proud of accomplishments we have not made--we have not yet befriended the Indian, have not welcomed the gifts of the people of this land. We have yet to sit down in peace with any of the people we used to build this nation: the Indian, the slave, the poor, the immigrant. The stories of peace are false prophecies--the worst kind of blasphemy.

 

As a nation, we have never repented of our desire to own land, things and people that are not ours. We have not even begun to turn away from these crimes and the deeper theft of dignity from ourselves and each other. We have not changed our desire to acquire or the way our armies march to the beat of "more More MORE." We still measure our success by what we have, not what we give.  The story exists to make it seem as if the work is already done. But it is not so.

 

On Thanksgiving, most of us will watch a parade that subtly (and not so subtly) directs us to continue to consume, to desire, even to demand more things.  It will not entreat us to go gently on the earth or to ask "How much is enough? What is fair and sufficient?"  It will not teach us that to be happy we need not have more, we only need to value what we have. Many of us will then watch football and never be reminded to care for the widow, the orphan, the poor, the weak, the "least of these." We will sit down at a feast and give thanks, but most of us will not turn that gratitude into action. We will not feed the hungry. We will not clothe the naked. We will not shelter the homeless.  We will not visit the imprisoned. We will not bind the wounds of the broken. How could we? We will never see them.

 

The stories we tell at this time of year make us feel good. Native Americans show the Pilgrims how to survive the winter. A tree grows in Brooklyn. Ebeneezer Scrooge learns to give. Clarence gets his wings and Bedford Falls is saved. A red-nosed reindeer finds out that what makes him outcast also makes him special. But while we tell these stories, reality is obscured. Native Americans often do not survive the poverty, addiction, racism and violence that our society perpetuates.  Trees grow in fewer and fewer places--and rarely in neighborhoods where they might shelter or inspire the poorest and most vulnerable.  The generosity that overtakes Ebeneezer Scrooge is as unlikely as ever. Instead, Scrooge's hard-heartedness and greed  run rampant through our culture. Angels like Clarence seem nowhere to be found as our children jump from bridges, hang and shoot themselves.  Outcasts in our world are not allowed to lead, nor held up as heroes, and are not shown how to find the beauty of being themselves.

 

And so, I continue to call this day Thanksgiving/Thanksgrieving. While I wish with my whole heart that the stories were true, I will not forget that they are fiction--fiction meant to make me feel good, to lull me back to sleep, to invite me only to complacency and complicity. I will do my best to resist the way they obscure my vision of what I know to be true:that gratitude is made real by our actions and that this season will only be holy in proportion to our ability to embody its true values: compassion, equality, acceptance, generosity, peace--and most of all Love. Not sticky-sweet fairy tale love, but the Love that demands, the Love that pushes, the Love that knows the cold loneliness of a world with no room at the Inn and will not stop until every soul--every single soul--is redeemed.  

 

And so I grieve and reserve some part of my gratitude, some part of my thanks-giving until that time may come. And in the meantime, I will continue to tell as much truth as I can and do as much as I can to be part of making the new story come true.

 

May it be so. May we be the ones that make it so. Amen. Ashe'. And Blessed Be.

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• Scott McIsaac and 2 others like this.
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  • Karen Eng thank you for saying this so eloquently. i was thinking today about saying a blessing before tomorrow's meal, and i wandered off into this very message - we have much to be grateful for and we should have a time to reflect on that and what this is has little to do with pilgrims (or puritans) and native people.
  • 2 hours ago