We Give Thanks

The season of growing is over. September harvest is past. Crops, fruits and vegetables are gathered in. Animals are settling into their dens for the cold season; winter is fast upon us.

It is the season where Americans traditionally look back, reflect, and give thanks for the blessings of the year. In this country, giving thanks is a tradition with roots stretching back to the earliest English speaking colonies on the North American Continent. The most popular story attributes the first thanksgiving celebration to a feast celebrated by Puritan settlers at Plymouth Plantation in Massachusetts with the local Native Americans in 1621. An older less-well known story attributes the first thanksgiving to a celebration by arrived colonists in Virginia on December 4, 1619.

Regardless of origin, the tradition of pausing to give thanks to almighty God was firmly fixed in the American character by the mid-ninteenth century when President Abraham Lincoln requested "fellow-citizens in every part of the United States, and also those who are at sea and those who are sojourning in foreign lands, to set apart and observe the last Thursday of November next as a Day of Thanksgiving and Praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the heavens."

So it is that we today set apart the final Thursday in November to gather, feast, and give thanks for the blessings of the past year, for food, for family, for friends, and for freedom. We give thanks for health and happiness, for trials overcome and for strength to endure trials in the future. Sometimes, survival itself is sufficient reason to give thanks.

Each year, I sit and make a list of things for which I am thankful and why. During the year, when I need to, I pull out and review my list. Doing so always gives me a lift.

Will you join me?

Will you write your own list of things for which you are thankful?

What will be on your list?

Why?

Why I Write

I looked and beheld a blank piece of paper before me and a pen inclined toward my hand.

I heard a voice say "Write!"

"But what shall I write?" said I.

"Just write!" said the voice.

"If nothing else, practice your penmanship. Learn to form the characters quickly and legibly. Writing is an art. Make yours beautiful. Make it a joy to look at.

Then, cover the paper with words. Craft those words into sentences. Make each sentence concise and to the point. Craft those sentences into paragraphs that clearly convey your thoughts and ideas, observations and emotions.

Fill copy books and tablets and legal pads with your skillfully crafted words, sentences and paragraphs. Fill reams and quires of paper. Fill memo books, notebooks, and journals. Write things you want to remember and things you'd rather forget.

Write a story -- write your story! Your story is yours alone. Only you can tell it correctly. It needs to be written.

Write about what makes you happy and what irks you, what lifts your spirit and what makes you grieve.

Write poetry; write prose!

Write fact; write fiction, write fantasy. Write opinion; write conjecture; write truth.

Write essays. Write reports. Write a blog.

But write. Always write.

The paper before you is your gateway to lands and peoples and universes you have only dreamed.

Visit them and tell me about them.

Now, take up the pen and write!"

Hearing the voice, I took the pen and began to write. I have been writing ever since. As long as pen and paper exist, I will write.

The blank sheet of paper lies before you. A pen inclines toward your hand.

Will you join me? Will you pick up the pen?

Will you write?

Will you share what you've written?


 

Heroes Proved

"O Beautiful for heroes proved

In liberating strife,

Who more than self

Their country loved,

And mercy more than life"

                                                      -- Katherine Lee Bates, America, the Beautiful

America, the Beautiful is arguably the most popular patriotic song in the nation today. We love to sing it for its images, images of spacious skies, of amber waves of grain, of purple mountain majesties and the fruited plain, images of majesty, of prosperity and of peace. Yet too often we neglect the second verse, the verse celebrating those who secured the images of the peace and prosperity of a magnificent nation.

Peace, prosperity, and liberty exist not as happenstance but as the results of willful actions by men and women to secure them. 

It took action by embattled farmers at Concord, by a ragged army at Valley Forge, Saratoga, Yorktown, and myriad other now forgotten places to secure our independence. When the conflict ended, the soldiers returned home and built a nation.

It took action by soldiers, sailors, and frontiersmen to secure our western territories and right to trade freely on the high seas in 1812. When the conflict ended, they returned home to build and expand a country.

Actions by men wearing gray and blue nearly tore the nation apart in the 1860s.  When it was over, the nation had confirmed that all men are indeed created with equal rights to life, liberty, and property. The nation that emerged was stronger than the one that entered the conflict. Regardless of the uniform they wore, those who fought returned home to build, expand, and strengthen the country.

Then came the war to end all wars, and the war that followed that, and police actions that looked, felt, and smelled like war but lacked the benefit of a formal declaration. Again, those who fought returned home and got on with whatever life was left to them. And again the nation was strengthened.

Today, we find ourself engaged in a series of long-term actions against an enemy who recognizes not liberty or freedom, but only the law of might. Heroes, proved in battle, are again returning home to build not the nation they left, but the nation it will become. 

We call these men "veterans". At one point each of them proved to love their country more than themselves by signing everything up to and including their very lives over to their country. Some thought they signed up for only a short period of time. Most now realize that their enlistment and its consequences never really end. For the rest of their days, they will remain heroes proved. They will remain veterans.

I am proud to be numbered among them.

A verse popular with the US Special Forces states "You have never lived until you have almost died.

To those who have fought for it, freedom has a flavor the protected will never know."

What is the flavor of your freedom?

If you live in liberty, thank a veteran.

Merry What?

In the mid twentieth century when I grew up we had the normal compliment of fall holidays. In September, we celebrated Labor Day by attending the Labor Day Parade. In October, we celebrated Columbus Day by studying the voyage of Christopher Columbus. At the turn of November, we celebrated Halloween with costume parties and trick or treat. In early November, we learned and recited the words of "In Flanders Fields" and wore red paper poppies in honor of those who fought in the war to end all wars.  In late November schools actually taught the story of colonists who came to the new world to worship God according to the dictates of their consciences, nearly starved, and who celebrated their first bountiful harvest with a feast of thanksgiving. Thanksgiving was about being grateful to God and family and food. Only with the arrival of the Sears Christmas Book on the day after Thanksgiving did our thoughts turn to the promise of Christmas.

Each holiday was separate and distinct. Sadly, this is no longer so. Today, the fall holidays are but weak punctuation for an annual orgy of consumer spending that begins on Labor Day and ends only after the January White Sales are done.

Labor Day means back to school; back to school means buy, buy, buy. After all, it's for the kids!

On Columbus Day he accomplishments of Christopher Columbus are forgotten in favor of the consumer economy his discoveries made possible. Buy! There are bargains to be had. Buy! Buy! Buy!

Holiday decorations go up on our streets in mid October, the better to light the way for shoppers.

On Thanksgiving, giving thanks, food, football and family are forgotten in the frenzy to get out, find those bargains and buy. Merchants are thankful they can stay open so they can sell, sell, sell, so that customers can spend, spend, and spend some more. And Thanksgiving begins the consumer feeding frenzy that leads up to Christmas and extends after Christmas sales well into January.

Consumers are left not with memories of good times but with a feeling of "What just happened?" and bills that will remind them of their purchases well into the coming year.

Call me a curmudgeon, but I miss the time when holidays were celebrated for the events they commemorated rather than the bargains they provided. I miss the time I could enjoy a Halloween,  Thanksgiving, or Merry Christmas without being assaulted by a strident message to buy, buy, buy.

I protest! I want my holidays back; I intend to take them back. I intend to celebrate each distinct holiday on its own merits.

I intend to buy what I need because I need it and I refuse to join the orgy of buying. I absolutely refuse to participate in the hangover of debt.

How about you?

How will you celebrate the coming holidays?

How long will you suffer the hangover of debt that comes from overconsumption?

Will you celebrate Halloween, Thanksgiving and Christmas or will you join the masses celebrating Hallowthanksmas"?

The choice is yours.

Merry Hallowthanksmas!

...And Forever

"For a day in His sight is like a thousand years,

And a thousand years but a day."

Forty eight years ago this weekend, the girl of my dreams placed her hand in mine and her life in my keeping. We recited some vows, signed some papers, and a man of God declared us to be husband and wife. 

We had only the vaguest ideas -- mostly wrong or misguided -- what the future held or what we were letting ourselves in for, only that we wanted to experience it together. So, with the confidence born of young love and youthful optimism, we became husband and wife. I have never been more proud. 

The ceremony remains as vivid as yesterday in my mind, the words of the vows we exchanged stronger than ever in memory. Surely, it was only yesterday. Surely, the calendar is wrong. Surely, forty-eight years have not come and gone since that evening. 

And yet they have. 

Forty-eight years filled with their own events, people, places, trials, and triumphs now exist only in memory. During that time we've learned to experience life together. We continue to learn. 

We neither know nor can imagine what the future will bring, but whatever comes to pass, we will face it together, as we have been doing for these last forty-eight years.

For the next forty-eight years... 

And forever.

The Gospel of Labor

This is the gospel of labor.

Ring forth ye bells of the kirk!

For the Lord of Love

Came down from above

To live with men who work.

And this is the blessing he planted,

Here in this thorn-curs'd soil:

Heaven is blessed with eternal rest,

But the blessing of Earth is toil.

    -- Anonymous

Today, we celebrate Labor Day in the United States. Originally intended as a salute to organized labor, it has become today a day of leisure in celebration of the unofficial end of summer. On the morrow, people will pick up their lunch bags, brief cases, book bags, tool boxes, and handbags and head off to work. On this first work day of the week, most will look wistfully back at the long weekend just competed and almost as many will already be looking forward to the weekend to come.

Leisure has become the goal and work a curse to be dealt with. And yet, in the book of Genesis we read that after creating man, God planted a garden eastward in Eden and that he took the man He had created and and put him into the garden to dress it and to keep it. In other words, the first man was given the dignity of a job with responsibilities "to dress the garden and to keep it."

Work gives dignity to the person, and the person gives dignity to the work. And no work is inherently better than other.  As my grandfather said to me "Remember, boy, whether you're directing a corporation or digging ditches, it's all food on the table."

In an October 1967 address to students at Barrett Junior High School in Philadelphia, Dr Martin Luther King, Jr. said the following:

"What I'm saying to you this morning, my friends, even if it falls your lot to be a street sweeper, go out and sweep streets like Michelangelo painted pictures! 

Sweep streets like Handel and Beethoven composed music. 

Sweep streets like Shakespeare wrote poetry. 

Sweep streets so well that all the host of heaven and earth will have to pause and say, "Here lived a great street sweeper who swept his job well!"  

If you can't be a pine on the top of a hill, be a scrub in the valley, but be the best little scrub on the side of the rill.  

Be a bush if you can't be a tree.  

If you can't be a highway, just be a trail.  

If you can't be a sun, be a star.  

It isn't by size that you win or you fail; be the best at whatever that you are!"

Work brings dignity to the worker. The worker gives dignity to the work. This is the gospel of labor.

What is your work?

What are you doing to "be the best at whatever you are?"

Books I Have Read

A Facebook Friend recently asked me to "Share a list of ten books that affected you in some way."

My problem was cutting the number to ten.

Here's my list, in no particular order.

1. The Bible
2. Mere Christianity 
3. 1984
4. Starship Troopers
5. Tom Sawyer
6. The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People
7. Getting Things Done
8. The Collected Poems of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
9. The Lord of the Rings trilogy
10. The Outlander

And, an honorable mention: The Red Badge of Courage

I now challenge you. Share a list of ten books that have affected you, either below in a comment, on Facebook, or via email.

Which ten books have most affected you?