Living Thankfully

Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday.  Yet, I also find it troubling to my spirit.

On the one hand, I rejoice in a day when my attention is focused on my family and those I love without distraction.  I rejoice in cooking turkey and dressing using my grandmother’s recipe.  I rejoice in the relaxed pace.  I rejoice in the sense that, somehow, all is right with the world. 

But I am troubled because I know all is not right with the world.  More troubling still, I know that the standard of living I enjoy is denied to most because of inequitable systems of distribution.  I know the peace I enjoy is denied to many across the world.  I know that the attention I give to family on this day is diverted to the challenge to survive for many families in the world I share with them.

There have been years when I felt guilty about Thanksgiving.  I know that does no one any good, but I can’t help feeling that way sometimes.

The spiritual challenge of Thanksgiving for those of us with so much is first to come to terms with how much we do in fact have.  The second challenge is to get over feeling guilty about it.  And the third challenge is to channel freedom from guilt away from complacency and toward acting constructively to make what we enjoy available to all God’s children. 

The central spiritual challenge of Thanksgiving is to live thankfully, which is to accept that what we have received is what we have been given and not what we have earned.  Beyond that, it is to take what we have been given and give in turn to others.  The spiritual challenge of Thanksgiving is not about guilt about what we have.  It is about what we do with what we have. 

Among the many undeserved blessings for which I am grateful this Thanksgiving are all of you.  Thank you.  I can only hope that I will act thankfully on the great gift you are to me. 

I hope the same for you, a Thanksgiving of acting and living thankfully, of using all you have, of giving all you have. 

Ginger, Annie, and Georgia (the new puppy) join me in wishing you all the happiness that comes, not from what you have, but with how you use what you have.

Peace,