Thanksgiving Day

Today is Thanksgiving which for many of us probably conjures up images of turkey, mashed potatoes, stuffing, and watching the Dallas Cowboys on television. Others may just imagine wild turkeys or cornucopias. For others still, the picture may be of Squanto, the Indians, and the Pilgrims all joining together at the table for a feast. Differences laid aside, humanity shared in this moment. And what a fitting and eerily similar portrait we find when we turn to the gospels. Jesus and his disciples gathered together at a table for a meal. A meal where differences were also put aside, where humanity was allowed to be shared. And Jesus poured the wine and broke the bread. Then he said, “Do this in remembrance of Me.” The Eucharist – a time of remembering. Thanksgiving – a day to recount our blessings. Maybe they aren’t that different. Maybe built right into the civil religion in America is a holiday that can act as the Eucharist for us. A day set aside for remembering. For reflecting. For contemplating.

This idea of remembering seems to run rampant in the letters of Paul. Following his customary ‘Grace and Peace’ intro, he often wrote of being thankful. To the church at Rome he wrote, “First, I thank my God through Jesus Christ for all of you, because your faith is proclaimed throughout the world. For God is my witness that without ceasing, I remember you always in my prayers.” To the church at Ephesus: “I do not cease to give thanks for you as I remember you in my prayers.” To the church at Philippi: “I thank my God every time I remember you, constantly praying with joy in every one of my prayers for all of you.” To the church at Colossae: “In our prayers for you we always thank God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, for we have heard of your faith in Christ Jesus and of the love that you have for all the saints.” And to the church at Thessalonica: “We always give thanks to God for all of you and mention you in our prayers, constantly remembering before our God and Father your work of faith and labor of love and steadfastness of hope in our Lord Jesus Christ.”

For some reason, I’m surprised at Paul’s unceasing thankfulness. I mean, he had so much to not be thankful for: afflictions, hardships, calamities, beatings, imprisonments, riots, labors, sleepless nights, and hunger to name a few the apostle himself noted. But you get the idea from his writings that he actually, somehow, through all these trials, was still thankful deep within his heart. And central to Paul’s thankfulness was remembering. Paul was a contemplative. He thought about life, about the churches he planted, about God, and about how lucky and blessed he was because of the new humanity that Christ brought to earth.

One of my roommates utilizes the adage, “Out of sight, out of mind,” usually in reference to his blanket covering his clothes in the corner of his room or the magazine he used to cover his orange soda spill. But when it comes to thankfulness, when it comes to entering into a state of thanksgiving, as soon as something leaves our mind, as soon as something leaves our memory, it is no longer a gift or a blessing. It is an entitlement. No longer are we at the mercy of God and God’s blessings. We are entitled to the blessings of God. When we forget about what it was like to be on the outside, we can no longer be thankful for being on the inside. When we forget about how lucky we are to have an abundance of food in the caf, we complain because we feel we are entitled to better food and we miss out on the gift sitting right before us. Or maybe it’s not a thing we forget about, but a person. We forget of the loved one who passed away, and we are bitter because it was unfair that they were taken from us. Or we’re in a relationship, and you’re getting past the initial honeymoon stage  where everything was good all the time, and the other person is annoying, and you begin to notice all their quirks, and all the things you don’t like. But if you could only remember back to what your life was like before they entered the picture, you would be thankful that they were a part of your life because you are no longer who you once were on account of them. But we must remember. We must reflect. We must contemplate. The Christian mystics informally followed the mantra: Action without reflection is meaningless action. Maybe life without reflection only gives birth to life without thanksgiving. Without joy, without shalom.

Josef Pieper, a Catholic philosopher, once remarked, while addressing the topic that possessions can bring about happiness, that happiness is indeed to be had from things, but only things that are contemplated or appreciated. I would have to agree.

Thanksgiving. An American holiday. A time to give thanks. But Thanksgiving is much, much more than that. Thanksgiving is a state of being, a state of perpetual gratefulness which only comes through reflection and appreciation. May this Thanksgiving be about the latter rather than the former. May this Thanksgiving be a time of stopping and reflecting upon all the graces and mercies bestowed upon us by God.

Naked Trees, Naked People

Winter is upon us. Snow is on the ground. The foliage of bushes and trees is no longer present. The hideous mess in our back yard can no longer be hidden by the leaves filling the tree tops. We can look across the yards now, with nothing being shielded. All is available to be seen. I was thinking about what it meant for trees to be laid bare, and I remembered a passage from the insightful Frederick Buechner. He wrote:

“Everybody knows what everybody else looks like with no clothes on, but there are few of us who would consider going around in public without them. It is our sexuality that we’re most concerned to hide from each other, needless ot say, although one sometimes wonders why. Males and females both come with mroe or less standard equipment after all. There would be no major surprises.”

He continues:

“Maybe our hunger to know each other fully naked is in the last analysis simply our hunger to know each other fully. I want to know you with all your defenses down, all your pretenses set aside, all your secrets laid bare.”

There is something about being naked that stirs our hearts. And not just in an erotic love sense. But there is something about being stripped of all labels, of all walls built up around you, and of all fig leaves trying to cover mistakes that is liberating. And yet frightening. Liberating because you can be yourself, truly yourself, and not have to pretend to be something you are not. Frightening because it makes you vulnerable. Very vulnerable. You may be free to be yourself, but what if the other person cannot accept you for that, or worse, what if the other cannot love you being you? We see this picture in Genesis when Adam and Eve cover themselves with fig leaves, afraid of God seeing them for who they truly are. If original sin has taught us anything, it’s to never let people see your true self or your vulnerability. And so we shy away from being naked with one another, not necessarily in the physical sense, but we always cover our tracks. But as I mentioned before, being naked is liberating. It’s freeing. It creates space for you to be yourself. This is why, I believe, the Song of Solomon is in the bible. It’s a picture of what being naked with another means. Otherwise with lines like, “Your stature is like that of the palm, and your breasts like clusters of fruit. I said, ‘I will climb the palm tree, I will take hold of its fruit,’” we might think the Song of Solomon to be simply another X-rated porn flick. But it’s not. It is a window into what it means to be truly human especially in the realm of being truly human with another. Because to be human in its rawest form, is to be naked with another.

The Providence of Snow

Yesterday morning, I awoke to find a thin layer of snow covering the ground outside. Our first snow of the year. Year after year, we find something beautiful about snow even though it can become a hassle. But there is something special about the first snow of the year. It always causes me to think about YHWH raining down manna on the Israelites after delivering them from the wrath of Pharaoh and the confusion that must have followed. What on earth did the Israelites think this manna stuff was? We read in the account in Exodus that ‘in the morning there was a layer of dew around the camp. When the layer of dew lifted, there on the surface of the wilderness was a fine flaky substance, as fine as the frost on the ground.’ It’s no surprise that the Israelites began to ask one another, ‘What is it?” Yes, what is it? First off, it is nourishment for the people of the Israelites; God had heard their cry and was now meeting this need of hunger. But I think it extends far beyond simply providing daily bread for the people. God has heard the cry of the Israelites and gives them meat and bread for a particular reason . . . that they will know that YHWH is the one true God. So while God is meeting the physical needs of these people, a subtle reminder is slipped in with it. God’s providence is new every morning and it is intended provide hope to help us through another day. But it is also to know that God has got things under wraps. That we depend on God’s transcendent providence; not on our own harvests and not on our own abilities. As we flip through the pages of Exodus, we find that manna and quail are not enough for the people. God’s providence of blessing the people with everything they need is not satisfying their desire for more.

I guess some things never change. We are still the same stubborn people today, never satisfied even when God has provided everything that we need. Just as the newness and freshness of the manna soon wore off for the Israelites, God’s providential touch soons gets lost in a myriad of wants and desires. Even with God’s providence imprinted on everyday, we soon become so accustomed to it that we forget the true substance behind it. It has been stripped of its meaning. God’s blessing becomes something we feel we are entitled to. And we forget (and forget often for that matter) that these blessings are not just for the sake of meeting our needs, but they remind us of God’s nature. Blessings hold a meaning beyond what meets the eye, and for a while, we remember that God is behind all of it. But just as the newness of snow will soon turn to disdain, and just as the manna became an entitlement and not a gift, we soon forget the touch of God’s hand. Oh how stubborn we are.