Thanksgiving Life
Brookfield Unitarian Universalist Church
November 21, 2021
Rev. Craig M. Nowak
What is your favorite holiday?
If you said Christmas, you’re in good company. A 2015 Harris poll found 46% of Americans ranking Christmas a their favorite holiday. The only other holiday to garner double digits in the ranking overall was Thanksgiving Day at 19%.
Growing up Thanksgiving, like Christmas…and Easter too, was one of the holidays where my largely Catholic, but non-observant family found a little religion and actually said grace before the meal. I can still hear my great-aunt, who often led the prayer,
Bless us, Oh Lord,
and these thy gifts which
we are about to receive from thy bounty,
through Christ, Our Lord.
Amen
Short, sweet, perhaps not entirely theologically sincere, it nonetheless seemed to check the box of things “good” people are supposed to do.
Yet to Native Americans like Chief Jake Swamp, it might seem odd that we gave thanks before a few select holiday meals but didn’t say anything before our weekly Sunday afternoon dinners, or any other meal, really, which differed from our holiday meals only in the quantity and variety of food served and that there were usually a few less chairs around the table.
That’s the funny thing about holidays; they can sometimes stymie the very thing they’re designed to lift up or promote. Thanksgiving Day is a good example.
Although Thanksgiving Day only become a national holiday in the US in the late 19th C. and the fourth Thursday of November wasn’t set as the official date of the holiday until 1941, thanksgiving observances among the colonial settlers and later citizens of an independent United States can be traced back to 17th C. New England and Virginia. These observances have long been remembered and celebrated, and mythologized as expressions of gratitude for something positive: surviving a harsh winter or a bountiful harvest, for example, as well as events like victory over perceived adversaries, which sadly, included Native Americans.
The intent, to set aside a special day to give thanks for something, may be noble, but the effect, in addition to yoking gratitude to desired outcomes, is to make giving thanks an exception rather than the rule.
That’s kind of what happened in my family. Grace, the simple act of giving thanks before a meal, was something we did only on special occasions. In that sense, according to the Sufi mystic Rumi, we were shoplifters, withholding from the world, its due praise and thanksgiving.
For Rumi, like many a deep thinker and teacher before and after him, maintained that giving thanks is an essential not exceptional response to life and being alive.
Employing gentler language, Chief Jake Swamp’s Thanksgiving address, our reading this morning, similarly advances an understanding that giving thanks is first and foremost a way of life not simply a special act reserved for specific holidays alone.
Over the past several weeks, children in our church religious exploration program and their families have explored what we might call thanksgiving life rather than Thanksgiving Day.
Drawing and reflecting on the Thanksgiving address from Chief Jake Swamp and the idea of thanksgiving as a daily response to life rather than an annual day on the calendar, Avery, Teagan, Tom, Nicole, Jack, Zoey, Brigid, Cara, Colleen, Mike, David, Isaac, and Amy talked, walked, and created a mural together.
And they dug deep.
Living thanksgiving life takes some detective work as it encourages us to think about relationships. And not just with other people close to us, but the whole interconnected web of existence of which we are a part. Among the things they named for which they are grateful were, food, the sun, animals, farmers, trucks, wind, soil, grocery stores and the people who work there, as well as, “The millions of tiny cosmic events that allowed us to live and have our lives as we know them.”
Now, I heard that while contemplating what it would be like to start every day by giving thanks the way Chief Jake Swamp describes, a potential dilemma emerged, “We'd find ourselves giving thanks for the same things over and over again, and we would get bored.”
I can relate. During my sabbatical I kept something like a gratitude journal in which I recorded at the end of each day one moment when I felt most alive that day and one moment I felt most drained. After a while I found I was recording the same kinds of things over and over and I might have gotten bored if I didn’t change my approach just a bit. Instead of trying to remember and then write something down at the end of each day, I decided I would try to notice and name those moments I felt especially alive or drained as I was experiencing them throughout the day. I soon found I experienced a lot more moments of feeling alive or feeling drained than the list I had been keeping and creating at the end of the day would suggest.
Paying attention to the diversity of the world around us and how we feel in real time, not just what we think about or can remember later, is another part of thanksgiving life. And so how wonderful a way to prevent boredom was the walk our religious explorers took last week where they were encouraged to use their sense of sight, hearing, smell, and touch.
And oh what a list of things to be grateful for they came up with: a waterfall and birch trees. People chatting, clouds in the sky. A dog chewing wood and crunching leaves. The feel and scent of the fall air. Reading these aloud right now, I’m reminded of my own memories of such things and am grateful for them as well as for being reminded of them.
And this points to another part of thanksgiving life, sharing. In a video I watched about the Thanksgiving Address of the Haudenosaunee, I learned that the address is something practiced individually and as well as given…spoken aloud… at community gatherings and that when shared communally the person giving the address is free to use their own words and give thanks for or to whom or whatever they feel so moved. In that same spirit, our religious explorers have shared with all of us a Thanksgiving Address in visual form, the beautiful mural they created which you may have admired when you walked in this morning or, for those attending on Zoom, found attached to your email. Take a moment to turn and look at it again.
Depicted are images of home and family, friends and pets. Music, art, books…trees and leaves. A green apple with peanut butter…and cheese. Taylor Swift, Dusty the dust bunny, the waterfall from last week’s walk…barefeet in the mud! Running and streams. Gardens and air. Weekends and church. A kaleidoscope of images reflective of the inexhaustible well of possibilities to inspire and offer our gratitude.
Indeed as you view and listen to what Avery, Teagan, Tom, Nicole, Jack, Zoey, Brigid, Cara, Colleen, Mike, David, Isaac, and Amy have shared you may have begun to think of things you’re grateful for that you want to express and share.
And so, whether you’re attending in person this morning of over Zoom, you’re invited and encouraged to take a closer look at the mural after the service and to add, with the crayons provided or via email, your own words or images of gratitude…words and images that might even inspire a shift toward a new or deeper practice of thanksgiving life.
The point of which is not to have us give up Thanksgiving Day, that second most favorite of holidays in the US, but to rethink what it is that sustains us.
I am certain that in more than a few UU services across the country this morning, the name G. Peter Fleck is being lifted up. Fleck, who became a Unitarian Universalist minister at age 75, noted that many people assumed the Pilgrims celebrated Thanksgiving because they were so grateful for having survived that first harsh New England winter when many they had crossed the Atlantic with had died. Fleck however, offered a different take. “It seems to me”, he said, “that they were able to survive because they were thankful."
Indeed, we all know or have heard of people who though bedridden are grateful to be able to travel by reading books or a person facing extraordinary hardship yet thankful for something as simple as a smile from a stranger or a bud on a tree.
In our often harsh and cynical world, such “attitudes of gratitude” may seem trite, but Fleck’s observation suggest gratitude is not only an alternative way of life, but a key to survival, particularly spiritual survival, in an often harsh and cynical world.
This, of course, is not Fleck’s insight alone, but one shared across cultures and religious traditions. It is at the heart of Rumi’s words from our call to worship, Chief Jake Swamp’s Thanksgiving Address, that was our reading this morning, and it is what our religious explorers have pointed us toward by engaging, reflecting on and sharing their experience of thanksgiving life with us today.
And so, on Thanksgiving Day, let us celebrate and give thanks however and with whomever we’ve gathered, but let us too, every day strive to live thanksgiving life. May it be so.
Amen and Blessed Be
Brookfield Unitarian Universalist Church
November 21, 2021
Rev. Craig M. Nowak
What is your favorite holiday?
If you said Christmas, you’re in good company. A 2015 Harris poll found 46% of Americans ranking Christmas a their favorite holiday. The only other holiday to garner double digits in the ranking overall was Thanksgiving Day at 19%.
Growing up Thanksgiving, like Christmas…and Easter too, was one of the holidays where my largely Catholic, but non-observant family found a little religion and actually said grace before the meal. I can still hear my great-aunt, who often led the prayer,
Bless us, Oh Lord,
and these thy gifts which
we are about to receive from thy bounty,
through Christ, Our Lord.
Amen
Short, sweet, perhaps not entirely theologically sincere, it nonetheless seemed to check the box of things “good” people are supposed to do.
Yet to Native Americans like Chief Jake Swamp, it might seem odd that we gave thanks before a few select holiday meals but didn’t say anything before our weekly Sunday afternoon dinners, or any other meal, really, which differed from our holiday meals only in the quantity and variety of food served and that there were usually a few less chairs around the table.
That’s the funny thing about holidays; they can sometimes stymie the very thing they’re designed to lift up or promote. Thanksgiving Day is a good example.
Although Thanksgiving Day only become a national holiday in the US in the late 19th C. and the fourth Thursday of November wasn’t set as the official date of the holiday until 1941, thanksgiving observances among the colonial settlers and later citizens of an independent United States can be traced back to 17th C. New England and Virginia. These observances have long been remembered and celebrated, and mythologized as expressions of gratitude for something positive: surviving a harsh winter or a bountiful harvest, for example, as well as events like victory over perceived adversaries, which sadly, included Native Americans.
The intent, to set aside a special day to give thanks for something, may be noble, but the effect, in addition to yoking gratitude to desired outcomes, is to make giving thanks an exception rather than the rule.
That’s kind of what happened in my family. Grace, the simple act of giving thanks before a meal, was something we did only on special occasions. In that sense, according to the Sufi mystic Rumi, we were shoplifters, withholding from the world, its due praise and thanksgiving.
For Rumi, like many a deep thinker and teacher before and after him, maintained that giving thanks is an essential not exceptional response to life and being alive.
Employing gentler language, Chief Jake Swamp’s Thanksgiving address, our reading this morning, similarly advances an understanding that giving thanks is first and foremost a way of life not simply a special act reserved for specific holidays alone.
Over the past several weeks, children in our church religious exploration program and their families have explored what we might call thanksgiving life rather than Thanksgiving Day.
Drawing and reflecting on the Thanksgiving address from Chief Jake Swamp and the idea of thanksgiving as a daily response to life rather than an annual day on the calendar, Avery, Teagan, Tom, Nicole, Jack, Zoey, Brigid, Cara, Colleen, Mike, David, Isaac, and Amy talked, walked, and created a mural together.
And they dug deep.
Living thanksgiving life takes some detective work as it encourages us to think about relationships. And not just with other people close to us, but the whole interconnected web of existence of which we are a part. Among the things they named for which they are grateful were, food, the sun, animals, farmers, trucks, wind, soil, grocery stores and the people who work there, as well as, “The millions of tiny cosmic events that allowed us to live and have our lives as we know them.”
Now, I heard that while contemplating what it would be like to start every day by giving thanks the way Chief Jake Swamp describes, a potential dilemma emerged, “We'd find ourselves giving thanks for the same things over and over again, and we would get bored.”
I can relate. During my sabbatical I kept something like a gratitude journal in which I recorded at the end of each day one moment when I felt most alive that day and one moment I felt most drained. After a while I found I was recording the same kinds of things over and over and I might have gotten bored if I didn’t change my approach just a bit. Instead of trying to remember and then write something down at the end of each day, I decided I would try to notice and name those moments I felt especially alive or drained as I was experiencing them throughout the day. I soon found I experienced a lot more moments of feeling alive or feeling drained than the list I had been keeping and creating at the end of the day would suggest.
Paying attention to the diversity of the world around us and how we feel in real time, not just what we think about or can remember later, is another part of thanksgiving life. And so how wonderful a way to prevent boredom was the walk our religious explorers took last week where they were encouraged to use their sense of sight, hearing, smell, and touch.
And oh what a list of things to be grateful for they came up with: a waterfall and birch trees. People chatting, clouds in the sky. A dog chewing wood and crunching leaves. The feel and scent of the fall air. Reading these aloud right now, I’m reminded of my own memories of such things and am grateful for them as well as for being reminded of them.
And this points to another part of thanksgiving life, sharing. In a video I watched about the Thanksgiving Address of the Haudenosaunee, I learned that the address is something practiced individually and as well as given…spoken aloud… at community gatherings and that when shared communally the person giving the address is free to use their own words and give thanks for or to whom or whatever they feel so moved. In that same spirit, our religious explorers have shared with all of us a Thanksgiving Address in visual form, the beautiful mural they created which you may have admired when you walked in this morning or, for those attending on Zoom, found attached to your email. Take a moment to turn and look at it again.
Depicted are images of home and family, friends and pets. Music, art, books…trees and leaves. A green apple with peanut butter…and cheese. Taylor Swift, Dusty the dust bunny, the waterfall from last week’s walk…barefeet in the mud! Running and streams. Gardens and air. Weekends and church. A kaleidoscope of images reflective of the inexhaustible well of possibilities to inspire and offer our gratitude.
Indeed as you view and listen to what Avery, Teagan, Tom, Nicole, Jack, Zoey, Brigid, Cara, Colleen, Mike, David, Isaac, and Amy have shared you may have begun to think of things you’re grateful for that you want to express and share.
And so, whether you’re attending in person this morning of over Zoom, you’re invited and encouraged to take a closer look at the mural after the service and to add, with the crayons provided or via email, your own words or images of gratitude…words and images that might even inspire a shift toward a new or deeper practice of thanksgiving life.
The point of which is not to have us give up Thanksgiving Day, that second most favorite of holidays in the US, but to rethink what it is that sustains us.
I am certain that in more than a few UU services across the country this morning, the name G. Peter Fleck is being lifted up. Fleck, who became a Unitarian Universalist minister at age 75, noted that many people assumed the Pilgrims celebrated Thanksgiving because they were so grateful for having survived that first harsh New England winter when many they had crossed the Atlantic with had died. Fleck however, offered a different take. “It seems to me”, he said, “that they were able to survive because they were thankful."
Indeed, we all know or have heard of people who though bedridden are grateful to be able to travel by reading books or a person facing extraordinary hardship yet thankful for something as simple as a smile from a stranger or a bud on a tree.
In our often harsh and cynical world, such “attitudes of gratitude” may seem trite, but Fleck’s observation suggest gratitude is not only an alternative way of life, but a key to survival, particularly spiritual survival, in an often harsh and cynical world.
This, of course, is not Fleck’s insight alone, but one shared across cultures and religious traditions. It is at the heart of Rumi’s words from our call to worship, Chief Jake Swamp’s Thanksgiving Address, that was our reading this morning, and it is what our religious explorers have pointed us toward by engaging, reflecting on and sharing their experience of thanksgiving life with us today.
And so, on Thanksgiving Day, let us celebrate and give thanks however and with whomever we’ve gathered, but let us too, every day strive to live thanksgiving life. May it be so.
Amen and Blessed Be