So as most all Americas sit down for a scrumptious meal with family and/or friends today, we devote time to sharing what exactly it is for which we give thanks. Yes, to many who have not experienced an American Thanksgiving celebration, the food seems to be the focal point. Even with the traditional gathering being half the normal size at my parents' this year, we still had all the homemade trimmings: turkey, stuffing, cranberry sauce (both whole and jellied), candied sweet potatoes, biscuits (a few burned and sacrificed, as per our usual holiday accident), cauliflower with cheddar cheese, and choice of dessert: cranberry-cherry pie or pumpkin pie served with a generous dollop of fresh whipped cream. In all reality however, I think it is more or less the excuse to gather: a great meal, or two or three, to gather friends and family in order that we might give thanks for all that we are grateful. What better, more enjoyable way to do so?
As I give thanks for the enumerate blessings bestowed upon me while I watch the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade followed by the Packers @ Lions game, I am ever-aware of those things which remain elusive yet for which I am eternally grateful. *Let us toast to just that!*
Editorial
A Thanksgiving Toast
Sitting down with friends and family today, there will be thanks for the steady currents, flowing out of the past, that have brought us to this table. There will be thanks for the present union and reunion of us all. And there will be prayerful thanks for the future. But it’s worth raising a glass (or suspending a forkful for those of you who’ve gotten ahead of the toast) to be thankful for the unexpected, for all the ways that life interrupts and renews itself without warning.
What would our lives look like if they held only what we’d planned? Where would our wisdom or patience — or our hope — come from? How could we account for these new faces at the Thanksgiving table or for the faces we’re missing this holiday, missing perhaps now all these years?
It will never cease to surprise how the condition of being human means we cannot foretell with any accuracy what next Thanksgiving will bring. We can hope and imagine, and we can fear. But when next Thanksgiving rolls around, we’ll have to take account again, as we do today, of how the unexpected has shaped our lives. That will mean accounting for how it has enriched us, blessed us, with suffering as much as with joy.
That, perhaps, is what all this plenty is for, as you look down the table, to gather up the past and celebrate the present and open us to the future.
There is the short-term future, when there will be room for seconds. Then there is the longer term, a time for blossoming and ripening, for new friends, new family, new love, new hope. Most of what life contains comes to us unexpectedly after all. It is our job to welcome it and give it meaning. So let us toast what we cannot know and could not have guessed, and to the unexpected ways our lives will merge in Thanksgivings to come.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/26/opinion/26thur1.html?em
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