Thanksgiving 2021 Gratitude & Hope
It’s good that once a year our society stops to give thanks for the many blessings of this life, family, hearth and health and especially for the annual harvest.
So many of the psalms reflect thanksgiving for life itself, for the bounty of creation, for the compassionate generosity of the life-giving God of Love. Psalm 65, for example: “You visit the earth and water it, you greatly enrich it; the river of God is full of water; you provide the people with grain, for so you have prepared it. You water its furrows abundantly, settling its ridges, softening it with showers, and blessing its growth. You crown the year with your bounty; your wagon tracks overflow with richness. The pastures of the wilderness overflow, the hills gird themselves with joy, the meadows clothe themselves with flocks, the valleys deck themselves with grain, they shout and sing together for joy.” In the midst of this global pandemic, it may be a struggle to feel such blessings, gratitude, and hope. For Christians, as for all spiritual people, there is a deep dimension to Thanksgiving. There are essential words from the Commendation which the gathered community recite together at a funeral service: “All of us go down to the dust; yet even at the grave we make our song: Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia.” Even at the grave we sing; in the face of death, in the midst of death, we sing. ‘Yeah, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death’—that’s every moment of every day, and this pandemic highlights the fragility of existence—yet we say, ‘I shall fear no evil, for thou art with me.’ Remember what comfortable words St Paul saith: ‘neither death nor life . . . nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God.’ That is the source of our thanksgiving, of our gratitude.
Negative voices abound right now, especially from newsrooms, but positive spiritual inspiration comes from people like Richard Rohr, Diana Butler-Bass, Walter Brueggeman, and many others. Reading their tweets and longer meditations, available free to your email inbox, provides positive counterbalance to negative news and ungrateful people. Also, in the quiet afforded by enforced isolation, we can be still and hear the still small voice of the Divine; we can bring into consciousness our joy in the beauty and bounty of the natural world around us. In the busyness and hurriedness of our lives, we can be and talk with God anytime, we can bring our spiritual awareness to bear on the present moment, and know that Jesus, God, the Spirit, is right alongside us. “Lo, I am with you always.” “The kingdom of God is within you.” God is always right here and now, even and especially when we don’t feel particularly in touch with the Divine presence.
There is much that we can do to nourish the Spirit within: read, the Bible, yes, favourite passages, the psalms, the great parables, the Beatitudes, but read poetry too. What poems did you memorize in your youth and childhood? I bet you still remember. When I lie awake at 3am, I can meditate myself back to sleep by repeating the 23rd psalm, slowly. Listen to music that truly moves you, whatever lifts your spirit—classical, jazz, folk, country. There is beauty at the touch of a button, so much available through the wonder of the internet— stimulating lectures, seminars, art gallery tours. If you are stuck in the house, the computer is a window to the world, a light for the soul. Time alone is invaluable for the spiritual life, peace and quiet to meditate, but also it affords time for conversation. Bestir yourself to phone a friend or family member and have a good chat. If you can get out, exercise is paramount for physical and emotional and spiritual health—take a walk in the woods, “Forest bathing,” the Japanese “practice of immersing yourself in nature to improve your wellbeing.” In this time of isolation, people have stopped to smell the roses, to hear the birds, children’s laughter, to taste the fruits of the harvest, to see the stars and wonder, to feel the warmth of the sun or the crisp fall air. Dylan Thomas wrote in his poem, “Fern Hill,” that waking each morning of his youth on a farm, he discovered the world “was all Shining . . . The sky gathered again/ And the sun grew round that very day./ So it must have been after the birth of the simple light/ In the first, spinning place, the spellbound horses walking warm/ Out of the whinnying green stable/ On to the fields of praise.”
Standing outside at night gazing at the moon and stars, one might feel insignificant in the grand scheme of things, but humanity is the only species on earth that is self-reflexive, self-conscious. We are aware and we know we are aware. When we look upon the cosmos, we are the cosmos reflecting back on itself. When we sing, we are the universe singing. Illness and death are reality and the pandemic certainly highlights reality. The crucifixion portrays Jesus coming smack up against reality—injustice, suffering and death. But his resurrection gives us faith in God’s ever-present love, a sure and certain hope in times of trouble, assurance that we are moving inexorably toward a greater Light and everlasting Love. “Thanks be to God for his indescribable gift!” We have much reason to sing: Alleluia!
