A Thanksgiving Reflection

I believe that Thanksgiving is an incredibly important holiday in our modern society.  We are entrenched with negativity and grievances and complaints and the news media, and social media all seem to encourage us to move deeper and deeper into our negativity.

And so I see Thanksgiving as something of a protest against this modern current of pessimism.  Celebrating abundance and gathering with family and being thankful are all practices that don’t often fit with the ways of the world, and that’s what makes them so important.

While Thanksgiving is not a strictly Christian holiday, it’s themes connect with aspects of our faith.  Because our faith calls us to be counter cultural.  To believe in a God that’s stronger than scarcity.  To believe in a God who is more powerful than death.  To hope for a future that’s better than the current reality.

I’d like to share with you now, a poem by Irish poet John Donohue.  It doesn’t speak about gratitude, but rather reflects on the power of blessings which I think is deeply connected to this Thanksgiving holiday and the practice of our faith.
 
Hear now this reading of John O Donohue’s poem “Thanksgiving Blessings”

In the parched deserts of postmodernity
a blessing can be like the discovery of a fresh well.
It would be lovely if we could rediscover
our power to bless one another.
I believe each of us can bless.
When a blessing is invoked, it changes the atmosphere.
Some of the plenitude flows into our hearts
from the invisible neighborhood of loving kindness.
In the light and reverence of blessing,
a person or situation becomes illuminated in a completely new way.
In a dead wall a new window opens,
in dense darkness a path starts to glimmer,
and into a broken heart healing falls like morning dew.
It is ironic that so often we continue to live like paupers
though our inheritance of spirit is so vast.
The quiet eternal that dwells in our souls
is silent and subtle;
and in the activity of blessing it emerges
to embrace and nurture us.
Let us begin to learn how to bless one another.
Whenever you give a blessing,
a blessing returns to enfold you.

This thanksgiving, may we continue to trust and believe in a God who is stronger than our collective negativity, and may we rediscover the blessings that we have received and power of blessing others.  Amen.