We Give Thanks
This year, many of our family members are taking planes, trains, and automobiles to come to our house for Thanksgiving dinner.
Some of us have not shared a table together in person since before the pandemic.
We’ve been preparing for weeks to welcome them all here, and I can’t wait to see them.
Playing with the candles I may, or may not, put on the Thanksgiving day table
Now, I’m an introvert, and I spend a fair amount of time (happily) alone.
But — surprisingly to me, at least — some of my deepest spiritual experiences have happened when I’ve been around other people; quite often, strangers.
Such moments are difficult to put into words; but I will try to describe one:
Many years ago, we were sitting at an outdoor table at a local restaurant. The sun’s late golden light skimmed the old bricks of the restaurant, as the indoor lamps for evening began to come on.
All around me I heard other people laughing and talking, and glasses and silverware clinking.
For a moment and at the same time for ever, everything and everyone seemed suffused with unseen light; and through it all I felt an unheard tone, reverberating like a single note held in the air; as if to say, “Pay attention to this.”
I felt an awareness that somehow this sense of deep connection in people laughing, talking, eating, taking simple joy in one another’s company, was what human life was fundamentally about, and that this was holy; and that this being-human was woven into a deeper joy that bound the more-than-human world; it was one note of the joy thrumming through all that is.
And then that moment was gone.
But I sometimes still feel that sense of resonating joy thrumming underneath.
I felt it another time years ago, at the opening of the Smithsonian Human Origins exhibit; in the murmur of a crowd of visitors all around, while I listened to a recording of someone playing a 40,000 year old bone flute.
I felt it again the other day when I smiled at a solemn-looking baby with bright red hair, sitting in a shopping cart seat. She gazed at me with a sober frown for a long moment, and then beamed back at me like a little sun, and I about fell back on my heels from the sudden blaze of that baby’s returning smile.
There is something holy about human life and connection, even if you are walking around among strangers.
Recently, I came across a litany* for Thanksgiving that resonated with that sense of joy in shared humanity. It expresses such appreciation for the human experience, that I want to share that part of it with you.
If you celebrate Thanksgiving this week, however you celebrate it, may it bring you joy.
And may the experience we all share in being human, also bring you joy.
We Give Thanks
For human life, for talking and moving and thinking together; for common hopes and hardships shared from birth until our dying;
For work to do and strength to work; for the comradeship of labor; for sharing in good humor and encouragement;
For partners and dear companions; for mutual forgiveness and burdens shared; for trust and confidence in relationship;
For family; for living together and sharing meals; for amusements and pleasures in community;
For children; for their energy and curiosity; for their brave play and startling frankness; for their sudden sympathies;
For the young; for their high hopes; for their irreverence toward worn-out values; for their search for freedom; for their solemn vows;
For growing up and growing old; for wisdom deepened by experience; for rest in leisure; and for time made precious by its passing;
We give thanks.
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References
** We Give Thanks — I adapted this, and have been unable to identify the original, definitive source for this. I’ve found multiple versions, with at least three different sources cited. If I get correct information, I’ll be glad to make proper acknowledgement.
Notes
* A litany is a call-and-response prayer; but I’m presenting it here like a poem, rather than a dialogue.