A Reason for Thanks

It is nighttime and family has settled in.  All that can be seen of the day’s festivities are footprints in the snow – a whole gaggle of them – running parallel to the sidewalk, as I imagine a random stranger trying to cipher exactly why a whole group of people would have walked some distance in the deep snow rather than on the clear sidewalk . . . and I smile.

The snow footprints are the only evidence of a family gathered and gathering, the last official task of the day the obligatory family photo, when we all donned our winter apparel to go outside for this year’s pic so we’d get the adjacent mountain in our background.  Everyone save our grand dame, my mother, walking beside her in the snow to take our respective places for that caught-in-time moment that is the family picture, like so many we have of times and memories and people gone by.

And should our own descendants some day look upon this photo and wonder about us, they won’t know save from handed-down tradition of our repast . . . they won’t see all of us gathered round as each took a turn reading aloud from The Day the Crayons Quit , clapping at the end of each turn, claps turning to cheers as our agreed story-telling master Mary Beth lends her particular blend of interpretive humor to the mix, all of us listening intently and patiently as new reader Rowen takes his turn. . . they won’t remember all the good news shared, the quiet conversations had into the night, the wee boy ‘teaching’ an older cousin how to play his own favorite computer game.

And there, in the middle of our family picture is a small dog being held by a small boy and they’ll wonder, I suppose, about the dog – a visitor grafted into a family moment simply because she was there – and isn’t that grand?

They – those descendants I imagine into being on a cold almost-winter’s night, won’t remember . . . but we will.

And that is good and good enough and reason and reason enough for thanks.

Guilty Thanks

Yesterday, driving the interstate a few car lengths ahead, the black pick up truck must have slid on some ice at the other end of the bridge.  I watched in horror as it slapped into a right angle to the road even as my foot went to the brake as my mind screamed don’t brake!  Do not brake!  at the same time it is responding if you don’t you’ll hit him!

These things happen so fast you can’t know for sure – but I think it was more the car’s abilities and technologies than my own that stopped our own slip into skid, but the pick-up truck was not so fortunate.

For a brief instant I thought all would be well as the truck simply faced into the median, but inertia had other plans and the truck propelled into the median, which has a steep middle.  The truck flipped onto its top and into the opposite lanes.

The driver (we think his name is Gary) was thrown from the truck onto the roadway.  He was alive at the scene as best we could tell, but his injuries were severe.  His mother managed to crawl out from under the smashed top.  She didn’t seem to be hurt, but she was in shock, so it’s difficult to know.

Several folk, we among them, stopped to render aid and as is so often the case, some who stopped were people with the needed skills – a fireman, a nurse, and others.  Cell phones become the blessing of the moment as people are able to call quickly for help.  All I managed to do was to silently pray, which is not nothing, but feels at the time so little.

Often have I heard folk speak about those who slow down passing an accident with scorn.  But I think it’s nothing nefarious or nasty.  I think they’re slowing down to make sure there’s help.  And to say a small, whispered, just-a-little-guilty thanks that it wasn’t them, for how easily it could have been.

We’re praying for Gary and his mother this Thanksgiving Day as we hope to hear news of whether he survived.  We’re saying our own (guilty) thanks that it wasn’t us this time.  And we’re giving thanks for firemen and nurses and random folks with tools in their trucks ready to be used to help at a moment’s notice when a stranger lies on the pavement fighting to live when, just moments before, whatever life he led was heading down the highway blissfully unaware of what was to come.

Life is so tenuous as well as so precious, with each moment offering no guarantees of another.  And so it is, for all the moments that have passed, I give thanks.

Over the River and Through the Wood*

Over the river and through the wood to Grandmother’s house we go . . . or, in my case, over the
mountains and across I-64 to Embassy Suites I go (followed by the actual day at Cousin Betsy’s, lest you begin to pity me) . . . these days, it is the grandmothers that often do the traveling and that’s okay too . . .

The horse knows the way to carry the sleigh through white and drifted snow . . . alas, my ‘horse’, a turbo-charged Impreza, most definitely does not know the way (although mapquest.com does, and if I had GPS, it certainly would – or maybe not – how can technology that sees from the skies still not know where a road is simply because it crosses woods and mountains?)  and oh, how I sometimes envy those folk of old who could set the horse on the familiar course and take a snooze along the way . . . and while I love the white stuff, trust me when I tell you, driving through mountains covered in it is not for the faint of heart and is nothing to sing about . . .

Over the river and through the wood to have a full day of play . . . or rather to have a day full of watching people who are paid to do it -- play – football – but I’ll be sitting in the other room talking and laughing and catching up . .

Oh, hear the bells ringing ting-a-ling-ling, for it is Thanksgiving Day . . . or rather Thanksgiving Eve (if there be such a thing-ting-a-ling) after the evening worship, car loaded as I set out alone to cross those mountains, yet accompanied by the souls of all my Thanksgivings past and present, weather permitting, as I wonder yet again when I do not spend Thanksgiving at home why I insist on this evening service attended by so very few instead of taking the week off (as I say I am doing every year) and just head on home in the daylight, for I do not really like night travel very much (a sure sign of aging) but will have the smell of pies to keep me company along with all those souls along the way . . .

Over the river and through the wood – now Grandmother’s cap I spy . . . well, I am the Gran and it’ll be my gloves and scarf and fogged glasses that are espied as we all gather round each other, hugging and laughing in the sheer joy of being together one more time . . . or not – it may be quite late and I might just slip into my bed in the hotel, but no worries, the jostling-gathering-laughing-hugging-loving will happen – just not tonight . . .

Hurrah for the fun!  Is the pudding done?  Hurrah for the pumpkin pie!  Since I’m bringing the pies (pumpkin and pecan), they’ll sure be done – just hope they weather the trip and that I don’t succumb to temptation and pull off the road somewhere between here and there on the burm of the interstate with trucks whizzing by, not knowing what treats lie within or they’d surely stop to share, as I scarf down the pies myself and roll in to desperately search for some suitable substitute at the local 7-11 . . . I won’t, really, but I’ll think about it . . .

Over the mountains and across the interstate to Thanksgiving and family and love I’ll go . . . see you there.


_______________________
*"Over the River and Through the Wood" is a Thanksgiving song by Lydia Maria Child. Written originally as a poem, it appeared in her Flowers for Children, Volume 2, in 1844. The original title of the poem is, "A Boy's Thanksgiving Day".  It celebrates her childhood memories of visiting her Grandfather's House. Lydia Maria Child was a novelist, journalist, teacher, and wrote extensively about the need to eliminate slavery. Wikipedia

A Crap Gratitude List

It’s November and it’s fashionable and even desirable to make the proverbial gratitude list – the calling to mind of the things for which we are grateful: the people who matter . . . the events that mark, in good ways, the passage of our time.

This is not that list.

This is the list of the stuff that doesn’t make the usual gratitude list.

This is the list of my own discovering of what has been offered to me in the crap moments.  At its most fundamental level, this is my own declaration that I am grateful to be.  Maybe everyone isn’t.  And maybe that’s okay.  The only walk I have walked is my own, so I cannot say.

Hence, no wisdom is offered here; no greater learning to be sought.  It’s just one woman’s list of the crap and how she’s looked at it and called it, if not good, at least worth remembering.

1. I am grateful (or trying to be) when people are nasty to me – grateful that they feel safe enough with me to show themselves (up to a point).  It’s a gift for another human being to take the mask off and just be their old, hairy, even mean, selves.  Hurts.

2. I am grateful that I am someone content with her own company most days, since I am single.  Better me than someone who isn’t.

3. I am grateful that I do not always get my own way.  My head is big enough without more privilege.

4. I am grateful to walk with the dying.  They teach me things.

5. I am grateful to hate the taste of fish and sea food – at least I’m not depleting the numbers of sea creatures on the planet.

6. I am grateful that I have a big mouth – someone has to say the stuff that needs saying – might as well be me.

7. I am grateful that everyone doesn’t like me – reminds me I’m not all that – and every now and then, reminds me to take a look at me a little closer.

8. I am grateful that I sometimes let people down – reminds me to be forgiving when disappointment comes my way.

9. I am grateful to live in a place where I stand in disagreement with most folks about most things – I love a good argument and if I lived with the like-minded, who would I fight with?

10. I am grateful to have rolled in the mud-ugly of life – I am kinder, gentler, more flexible for it – sometimes.

This is no Pollyanna exercise.  I do not say, nor do I believe that everything happens for a reason or that all will be well in the end.  This is the simple realization that even the crap in my life, whether self-induced or visited upon me by others, has something to offer right in the moment of its happening.  Perhaps it’s a bit Zen, this thinking that the good and the bad can co-exist (whether peacefully or not is beside the point).  I cannot say.

The Thanksgiving

Gathering with family and eating at Grandma’s house . . .
The food . . .
The smells . . .
Drawing names for Christmas . . .
My first ‘Thanksgiving’ dinner - friends and I were going to New York for Thanksgiving in college, so beforehand, I invited them over and made them a feast . . . my first Thanksgiving away from home . . .
Thanksgivings not-so-traditional and/or away . . . Thanksgiving with my seminary colleagues also working overseas in Scotland . . . fabulous . . .Thanksgiving alone after my divorce . . . Thanksgiving in New York City, separated from all my family, walking from 34th Street to the restaurant in the 80's . . . the parade was fabulous, the dinner, not so much . . .
When I started making the Thanksgiving dinner . . . family gathered . . . laughing, the Thanksgiving box Araka made (I still have it) . . . getting out all the best china, setting the table, appreciating the beauty as well as the food, friends coming over later, after their own feasts . . . my step-son’s Thanksgiving of four(!) meals . . . he calls every Thanksgiving . . . Thanksgiving in my apartment with seminary friends . . . the Saturday after Thanksgiving when I learned my colleagues had been kidnaped . . .
There are no food disasters in my memories . . . there are only memories of family and friends, gathered around the table . . .
It is no accident that in celebrating communion, we first say the prayer called The Great Thanksgiving and that communion itself, in the Greek, is called The Eucharisto (The Thanksgiving) . . .
I never serve at a soup kitchen for Thanksgiving or Christmas . . . those are days I always want to be with family and friends, just us, sitting, laughing and talking, even watching football . . . our togetherness our communion and our thanks . . .

Thanksgiving Cigarettes

It is March, 2006.  I am sitting on a bench outside a quonset-hut type structure at the Mortuary Unit offices at Balad AFB near Baladiat, Iraq.  I am waiting to learn whether I will be given permission to accompany the remains of my colleague, Tom Fox, home (I was not).

In the waiting hours that stretch into a few days, I sit and smoke cigarettes and listen and talk with the young soldiers of the Unit.

One fellow (from Kentucky, I think) remembers Thanksgiving, 2005.  He was there at Balad.  Secretary Rumsfeld had come to heavily-fortified BIAP (Baghdad International Airport) and had a Thanksgiving meal – turkey and all the trimmings – with a select group of military personnel there.  The meal was shown on television back home.

The young man sitting beside me in the dark laughs the bitter soldier-laugh of one far too young for such ‘wisdom’ and tell about how his mother was so excited that he had gotten to have such a fine meal.  No matter what he told her, no matter how many times he explained it, she could not or would not believe that he and his compatriots had not been given the same treat – that this was a photo-op and he was not included.

I remember that moment when and if ever I am tempted to discount the impact of propaganda: there is a mother’s son somewhere whose mother will not believe that he did not have a wonderful, peaceful Thanksgiving respite, for she will believe the evidence of her eyes over the claims of her son who was there, living the reality the tv never showed.

CPT (Christian Peacemaker Teams) gave me many gifts; one I was not looking for was the unique vantage of standing at the margins of things.  Even when my team and I were center stage in tragedy, a place we neither sought nor desired, we still stood at the edges, from where we bore our witness.

You learn many things from the margins.

One of my reminder lessons is that most soldiers around the world today or any day, will not be feasting on turkey with all the fixings.  Most of them will be eating some version of MRE’s when in field.  The ones from the US are well fed.  But they’re not at a party.  And neither are their enemies.

The obvious lesson: that whenever you see old men in suits in war zones, know that what you are seeing represents not reality but stagecraft.

The deeper lessons reside in the dark behind lit ends of cigarettes.

Thanksgivings Past

Over the river and through the woods, to Grandma’s house we went.  Life was good with Dad at the wheel, Mom beside him in the front, and me in back watching the world speeding by as we drove the 18 miles to Grandma’s.

In the ways of childhood, the ride seemed much longer, much farther, than a mere 18 miles.  We were crossing mountains and entering under the forest canopy, curving first one way then the other, to make our way back from our city house into my Dad’s childhood, heading “out home”.

As an only child, I could barely contain my excitement at getting to see the cousins again.

The food was the food – plenty and good and hot.  So many years later, I have yet to master my Grandma’s skill at getting everything to the table hot.  I mourn that it’s too late to ask her how she did it.

And in our family, long before the retail merchants caught on, Thanksgiving was always the immediate segue into Christmas.  Our last gathering before the big holiday, on Thanksgiving we would draw names for our gift exchange, some of us secretly making trades: you got your Mom?  Oh no!  Of course, I’ll trade with you!

And I’m pretty sure it was on Thanksgiving when I cooked up the ill-fated scheme to have cousin Doug play Santa Claus for his younger sister Lisa, who still believed.  Ill-fated because Doug chickened out at the last minute (or maybe he planned it that way all along; with Doug, you can never tell).  I was probably about 11 at the time, so my concocted costume required lots of imagination – red tights and pillow-stuffed sweat shirt, black boots and a home-made cotton-ball beard looked much more like Santa in my imagination than in real life.

Because Doug bailed, as the creator of the costume, of course it fell to me to jump in, and jump in I did.  And of course, my loving family would memorialize my humiliation with photographs snapped just at the moment when little Lisa asked in her child’s soprano, Why is Beth dressed up like Santa Claus?

I wish I could tell 11-year-old Beth not to sweat it, we were making memories.

Sitting Pretty

The turkey vulture or as it’s known where I live, the turkey buzzard is anything but beautiful . . . it’s red-skinned featherless head and hunched appearance, its ungainliness when not flying, not to mention what it’s actually eating off the asphalt, tend to make me recoil on sight from these critters.

My son Ben and grandson Rowen, however, have developed quite an affinity for the turkey buzzard and Ben even managed to find a children’s book celebrating the bird’s contribution to creation (yes, all creation needs its garbage collectors, I grant you, but that doesn’t make them beautiful).

Yesterday, I saw these birds in a different light.

There’s a large water tower adjacent to the house of my friends where I’ve been staying.  Yesterday was the day of Stu’s funeral and before we were to leave, I was standing outside basking in the warmth of the sunlight on an otherwise cold winter’s day.  Looking towards the water tower, I noticed at first one and then another and then another of the buzzards alight on the rail surrounding the tower, with their wings outspread.

It was an oddly-compelling sight and for the life of me, I could not figure out what they were doing in this seeming defiance of gravity and balance.  They actually held position as long as I watched and presumably beyond.  I found myself going into the house only to come back out and see if they were still at it: they were.

After asking the folks gathered with no success, I, of course, went to the internet.  While there may be alternative explanations, the consensus seems to be that this is the flight enhancing interactive design plan of an I. M. Pei:

In the morning, Turkey Vultures are often seen standing on tree limbs with their wings outstretched to the sun.  They are a very lightweight bird with long hollow bones filled with air.  As the sunshine warms them, the air in their wing bones expands, warming them up and making it easier to fly.  Cathartes aura, the Latin name for Turkey Vultures, translates as Golden Purifier or Cleansing Breeze.  American Indians called these birds the “Peace Eagles” and regarded them as a symbol of strength in accepting difficulty. Turkey Vulture

And now, as I contemplate the uplifted wings of the turkey buzzard, I am reminded of the meaning of its Latin name: cleansing breeze . . . eating carrion may be the work of the garbage collector of the bird world, but the cleansing breeze of their work is indeed an occasion for wing-lifting, bold posture thanksgiving.

Fly well, Peace Eagles, fly well.

A Thank You to My Family

After all the food was eaten, the dishes washed and put away, football watching wound down, and the family game (Taboo this year) played to satisfactory conclusion, after all that, came my favorite time of Thanksgiving . . . gathered in comfortable pauses and quiet conversation, family all around, young and old, happily in each other's presence, too tired to care about any remaining mess and simply glad to share snippets of thoughts, moments of our lives.

Thanksgiving has always been a favorite, blessed, gathering in my family.  In that space, wherever we gather, we don't so much express our thanks as live it out in time spent with each other.

And in the aftermath, with the turkey gone, the pies all eaten save the secret piece stashed in the back of the frig, the family scattered back to the winds from whence we all came, I find I am thankful . . . thankful these people are family to me and I to them . . . thankful that we can gather together and share and laugh like fools and cry like babies . . . thankful for the memories that will carry me forward to the next Thanksgiving.

Blessings to all now and evermore.

Thankful Hands

In my own mind, giving thanks brings to mind grace at meal time, the obligatory thank you to the holy host before impatiently digging in.  If you’ve ever been at a family Thanksgiving where the one praying seemed to go on and on and on, you’ll know what I mean.  It’s interesting to note that in the Jewish tradition, thanks are offered after the meal, not before.  Maybe if we followed that tradition, we’d be more patient with the thanks.  Maybe.

But maybe our temptation to impatience is more about not truly appreciating the cost of the meal, even in  earthly terms.  Maybe the farmers among us, whose hands have mixed with the soil that brings forth our food are more patient, more aware, more thankful.  For the farmer knows, really knows, in-his-very-cellular-structure-knows what I as a former city-dweller can only understand with my mind: bringing forth the bounty of the earth is no easy task.

At this time of year, to remind us of the debt of thanks we owe, we consider the Pilgrims and their difficult winter, saved only by the hospitality of the Natives who shared their food with them.  The Pilgrims’  thanks were heart-felt, because the food they received came as they were on the brink of starvation.  This was not just another meal in a long line of generally satisfying dinners.  No – this . . . was . . . salvation.

Jesus reminds us that he did not come for the healthy, for they have no need of him.  Rather, Jesus came for the sick.  It’s common sense, isn’t it?  Only the sick need a doctor.  Only the dying know the joy of restored life.  Only the starving know the saving grace of a meal.  Perhaps only those whose hands have been empty can really give thanks when those hands are filled.

Conversely, only the satisfied could say with poet Robert Frost, “Of apple-picking . . . . .  I am overtired of the great harvest I myself desired.”


It is all too easy in our place and time to grow weary of the burden of our plenty and in our weariness, to miss entirely our lack.  Thankfulness comes from the deep place within, the place where, in our smallest child-like selves, we know that what we have, who we are, is the result of grace, not merit.


It is the nature of thankfulness to recognize the gifts of others in our lives.   Thankfulness is not gladness, nor is it self-satisfaction; rather, thankfulness is full appreciation for the reality of our condition and its cause.    Maybe the real trick about thankfulness is to understand that our hands are really empty even when they seem quite full.

Paul calls the Thessalonians and us to a life of continual thanks, for God wishes us to be a thankful people.  Perhaps when it comes to thanks, the question for us is whether we can know ourselves to be starving pilgrims and desperate farmers, even when we feel like weary over-satisfied apple pickers.

There Will Be Pie!

A Thanksgiving Prayer

Mindful of the many pies I’ve yet to bake for the coming Thanksgiving festivities, I penned the title for today, There will be pie!, thinking literally of the pies, the smells, the savory tastes, that evoke so many Thanksgiving memories.

Googling the phrase, however, has taken me in a totally different direction, far away from the pies that will, in a few short hours, rest in my oven.

At first, I was excited to see that Johnny Cash had penned a song There'll be pie in the sky but fan that I am, I have to admit There’ll be pie in the sky, by and by when I die are hardly his best lyrics.

Where, I then asked of my magic Google machine, did the phrase pie in the sky originate?

Turns out it’s a phrase coined by labor leader Joe Hill in the song The Preacher and the Slave, lampooning the Salvation Army for its perceived lack of care for the needs of the poor in the early 1900's, as a parody of the hymn In the Sweet Bye and Bye.

Long-haired preachers come out every night,

Try to tell you what's wrong and what's right;

But when asked how 'bout something to eat

They will answer with voices so sweet:

You will eat, bye and bye,

In that glorious land above the sky;

Work and pray, live on hay,

You'll get pie in the sky when you die.

It goes on from there in similar vein.  As I read, I feel the ouch of it: as a preacher, I must ask myself whether I, too, promise a vague heavenly release while ignoring the real pain standing right in front of me?  I hope not, but the question is an important one for people of faith.

Was Joe Hill right?  Do we meet real pain with bromides and vague promises?  Do we dismiss present suffering as of no account or cost because of the prospect of heavenly ‘reward’ (a word I loathe in the context of life with God, whether here or hereafter)?  Do we, blinded by promises of glory, miss seeing the real human being with real need standing right in front of us?

Or do we offer our own real presence to the real pain of others?  Do we attend as well as tend them?  

May it be so, O Lord, may it ever and always be so, especially in these holiday times when joy and plenty stand in sharp contrast to suffering and want, making it all the worse for the comparison.

May we be mindful of the needs of others: the need for companionship as well as for provision, the need for a smile and a warm touch as well as a plate of food, the need for caring as well as for sharing.

***

Really, really, really, I wasn’t thinking at all about politics, religion or even Jesus when I sat down to the computer this morning.  It was really just going to be about pie.  Really.