Thanksgiving has become one of my favorite holidays. As a pastor, this is one holiday that allows me to make time for and focus almost all my attention on my family. I also enjoy eating, so that helps.

This Thanksgiving did provide some unnecessary drama. I have been telling people I now have a new definition of “hell.” It is having your refrigerator full of wonderful leftovers and your microwave has just blown out. Ours bit the dust on Saturday morning. My wife was cooking bacon in it and small flames shot out from the side. My first instinct was to assume that she had spilled something. It pays to question some of those “first instincts.” She had done nothing wrong, the microwave was just shot. I guess we have to go “cold turkey” without a microwave!!! (pun intended)

Anyway, Thanksgiving was very nice. Besides being a wonderful family time, technological glitches aside, the spirit of Thanksgiving is important to me. I have become convinced of the power and critical importance of “gratitude.” When we are grateful, we are not consumed by what we lack, by what we don’t have. Gratitude keeps us from getting captured by the excesses of consumerism, which derives its power from convincing us that we don’t have enough of something that makes life grand, that our lives lack something essential, that our being is insufficient in some way. Gratitude helps me slow down, and in gratitude I see the world more truthfully for I see how deeply my life is enriched by the people who are a part of it. Gratitude slows me down so I can appreciate what I have instead of worrying about what I don’t have.

This Thanksgiving I stole away for a few moments to do some reading. I am grateful for the ability to read and for all the things I have to read. I finished an essay on reading Proust from the periodical The Common Review. I have not read Proust’s work In Search of Lost Time, though I have a copy of it. Reading the essay enticed me to read a few pages from the first volume. What beautiful prose. What a thoughtful meditation on the sleeping and waking consciousness. Such writing is another thing to be grateful for. I look forward to the day I can immerse myself in this work.

In my few moments of solitude, I also sought out a poem that I love – a poem of profound gratitude. It is Lisel Mueller’s poem “Alive Together.” I think I’d like to begin a tradition of reading it every Thanksgiving. It begins: “Speaking of marvels, I am alive/together with you.” The poet goes on to write about the improbable odds of her being alive together with her husband, her beloved, and she rejoices that they are:

alive with our lively children
who – but for our endless ifs –
might have missed out on being alive
together with marvels and follies
and longings and lies and wishes
and error and humor and mercy
and journeys and voices and faces
and colors and summers and mornings
and knowledge and tears and chance.

I am grateful for my beloved and for our three children and our two dogs, for family and friends, for meaningful work, for books and music and movies, for walks, for the time to write this and for any who read it. Thanks be to God.

Hope you had a nice Thanksgiving.

With Faith and With Feathers,

David