Every November I write another newsletter article about giving thanks. I reread past year’s articles and TBH (to be honest), they all kind of sound the same. Not BAD, really. They just had an air of predictability, an easy reminder of the Thanksgiving season. Part of me chaffed at doing another one and I struggled with how to be creative and honest with this tradition that is so heavily ingrained in America.
There is validity in traditions, especially if they give comfort and meaning to our lives. That is the whole point of Thanksgiving as a holiday: a dedicated time to give thanks for all God has done for us. But on the other hand, traditions can be blinders, preventing us from addressing deeper issues in our lives and world.
The Fall season is a time of harvest. Most of us don’t have farms anymore, so the thought of stockpiling for the winter is a old tradition we cling to despite Schnucks and Dierberg’s right around the corner. Many of us love the imagery of the cornucopia and the well-appointed Thanksgiving dinner table, the memory of the first Pilgrims meal with the Indians. That is just a part of American life in November.
I am going to participate in a joint Thanksgiving Worship service with several other Christian churches later this month and I was surprised and glad to read a short introduction to the service. It was a simple line about recognizing that the land on which we live and worship originally belonged to the Myaamia, Osage, Quapaw, Ochethi Sakowin, Kiikaapoi, and Kaskaskia peoples. It also recognized that those people are not gone, but still live in our midst caring for this place, their home and ancestral homeland.
It is easy to let Thanksgiving be a time of giving thanks for the easy things – family, friends, food. It can be hard to give thanks for hard things. The outcome of those first years between the European settlers and the indigenous people did not go well for the indigenous people. Yet every year, we give thanks for the help the “Indians” gave to the Pilgrims. This simple version hides layers of history and hurts that still are around today.
Today, more and more, we understand the importance and necessity of acknowledging the land and the original, Indigenous peoples whose creation stories are rooted here and who have lived on this land since time immemorial. We can certainly still be thankful for our house, our job, our church. Yet, having an understanding that runs deeper than the Norman Rockwell poster can help us not just be thankful, but to be generous as well. For what good is thankfulness if does not spur us to generosity and compassion? What good are some friends and family, if it comes at the expense of excluding other neighbors? If Jesus were to dine with us and we asked him, “What are you thankful for, Jesus?” What would he say?
Pastor Karl
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