(The people are preparing -- and are being prepared, at long last after their escape from Egypt and the long journey with God through the wilderness, to enter the Promised Land. Before they enter the land, they are given three basic rules: remember it is God who provides this good land and the freedom to enjoy it; do not think you have earned it, or are more entitled to it than anyone else; and remember to live in the way God desires, if you want to be able to be able to stay in the land.)
What does Thanksgiving look like?
I’ve heard about a
few of the plans, and my guess is that most of them involve traditional full
turkey dinner with desserts of pumpkin or apple pies, enjoyed around a festive,
seasonally decorated table.
Wes and Dorothy are
cooking a turkey tomorrow, for however many of their clan will be in town and able
to gather and celebrate the day with them.
The Durfey-Bridgman connection is gathering later today and in addition
to their usual family numbers coming in from around the Bay, they have a few
extra guests as well.
And I wonder what
other feasts are planned? Anyone care to
share (so to speak)?
Later this
afternoon, Japhia and I will be enjoying our annual Thanksgiving Sunday dinner
with my sister and brother-in-law, Val and Jim, in Burlington. Their son Sean will be in for the weekend
from Ottawa. Aaron, my son, will be
joining us, and it too will be a full turkey dinner, pies for dessert included,
with no doubt a bit of pumpkin ale and Ontario wine as well to help it all go
down well. Who could ask for a better
Thanksgiving?
Of course, Sean’s
girl-friend won’t be there; she’s stayed back in Ottawa with her family. Aaron will be coming alone, having broken up
with his girl-friend a few months ago.
Japhia knows that with her health issues she will be having only a very
few of the things put out on the table, and then only small portions as
well. Plus we probably won’t be able to get
together for Thanksgiving dinner this year with her kids and our grand-kids. And I’m sure that we’ll also at some point be
talking at the table about the Thanksgiving dinner that didn’t happen two years
ago because Valerie was in the midst of chemo treatments.
But we’ll be there,
and be happy to be there. As we always
do, as we sit down at the table and before we eat, we’ll join hands around the
table and each one of us in turn will share what we feel really thankful for as
we gather this year.
Because isn’t that
at least one thing Thanksgiving is – in the midst of the incompleteness,
brokenness and disorder we suffer, holding hands around the holes and
heartaches in our life, to remember and share what we are grateful for?
What does
Thanksgiving look like?
Over twenty years
ago while I was serving as ecumenical chaplain at McMaster and Japhia worked in
the chaplaincy office, Thanksgiving every year was a dinner that the chaplaincy
team and a whole bunch of volunteers from the campus and from local
congregations put on for international students at the university. On the Thursday night before the long
weekend, up to 10 or 12 big turkeys would be cooked and carved by volunteers, a
full traditional Thanksgiving dinner of mashed potatoes, stuffing, veggies and
cranberry sauce would be prepared, apple cider and pies would be carted in, and
a few hundred students from all around the world – far from their own homes,
strangers to the culture and customs of their temporary new home, would be
seated and served the best we could offer of Canadian family Thanksgiving.
Then after dinner
they would share with us – putting on a cultural show of music, dance and art
from where they came from – giving us a taste of the best of what they could
offer of their culture and customs.
Thanksgiving looks
like that as well – people reaching across divides and barriers, across
loneliness and isolation; sharing with others – with strangers, the best of
what they are as family; letting others – letting strangers share with them;
and in the process becoming an even larger, new kind of family, grateful for
the blessings of shared life together.
What does
Thanksgiving look like?
One Thanksgiving –
again while Japhia and I were still at the chaplaincy centre, and I was living
more or less alone in the manse – in the midst of struggling not too well to
create a post-separation life, at Japhia’s encouragement I invited a handful of
students who were likewise a bit adrift and disconnected from family over the
holiday, to come for Thanksgiving dinner at the chaplaincy manse. I think the idea may have been inspired by
Anne Tyler’s novel Dinner at the Homesick
Restaurant – where a motley bunch of lonely and cast-off strangers sharing
a meal together around a restaurant table becomes an image of communion and a
feast of God’s kingdom.
At least it sounded
a bit like it, when we planned it. And
for a while when we first sat down, it kind of almost felt like it too.
Except the cook (me)
was not too experienced in cooking for that number of people, some of the
calculations of food may have been a bit off, and then when the food was passed
around one of the guests in particular chose to load his plate with half of the
mashed potatoes from the bowl before most of the others even had a chance at them,
with none left in the kitchen to replenish the supply for others.
Very quickly,
Thanksgiving became a rather unequal distribution of the food that was
available. Some at the table left
probably a little hungry, and either perplexed or resentful. And I as host of the feast and master of the
table was left feeling both embarrassed and a little bit angry at how my good
will towards all was subverted by the greed of just one.
Sometimes
Thanksgiving brings out the worst in us, and really highlights the possibility
and the reality of inequality, greed and want being perpetuated in God’s good
world.
What does
Thanksgiving look like?
One last image. I haven’t been there, but I’ve seen the ads
in the paper. The ones of a close-up
picture of a man sitting at a long table among other tables, surrounded by
others at the tables as well, lifting to his mouth a forkful of turkey from the
plate of Thanksgiving food in front of him, and the caption reading “$3.99 for
Thanksgiving dinner” and in invitation
to give a donation to Mission Services or The Good Shepherd Centre, to
help them provide a Thanksgiving meal for those in the city who are homeless
and poor.
I wonder what it’s
like to have Thanksgiving dinner served by Mission Services or The Good
Shepherd? What it’s like to be one of
those who serves? What it’s like to help
provide for the meal through a charitable donation?
Thanksgiving
sometimes is an opportunity and an experience of compassionate sharing, and a
lived-out recognition of the awareness that somehow we are either all in this
together, or we’re not in it at all.
When the people of
Israel come into the Promised Land they are told three things.
One, they are to
remember, and to teach their children from generation to generation that it is
God who has brought them to the land, and God who provides the good things and
the freedom to enjoy them.
Two, they are advised
not to start thinking that they somehow make their own good fortune, or that
they are somehow more deserving of it than others.
Three, they are
commanded to remember the laws and the ways of God, and to keep on practicing and
living out the good will of God towards all, if they want to stay in the good
place where God has led them.
And when we take to
heart these three simple rules for living in the Promised Land, there’s
probably no end to what Thanksgiving can look like, and what it can mean for us
and for others around us.
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