by Rev. Thomas Disrud

I’ve always liked Thanksgiving. I think it may be because the concept of the holiday is so simple. We set aside a day to give thanks for all that we have. I suspect this may be why the holiday has not been corrupted like some others have. Christmas now starts long before Thanksgiving. More and more, I find that by the time it actually arrives, I’m worn out.

But Thanksgiving isn’t like that. The rituals we observe are simple ones: Gathering with people we care about. Sitting around a table and eating good food. We relax and give thanks for what we have.

Of course, it may not always be that simple. We may not think there is a whole lot we have to be thankful for. The holiday may just be a bad reminder of all that. And, being Americans these days, we may be on how much we can have. And it may be that the people we love are driving us nuts. We may be seeing their quirks more than their qualities. It may be a matter of perspective. Author Nancy Kelton reflects on all that she is thankful for:

"I am thankful that on this holiday, my immediate family and favorite relatives will all be together. I am thankful that we will be able together at someone else's house. I am thankful that last year, when my Aunt Ruth showed up with a lopsided cranberry mold, my daughter was the only one who saw me tilt my head. I am thankful that "the mold" is only one of a zillion things my daughter and I regularly laugh about in private.

"I am thankful that my relatives are the kind of people who don't immediately ask intrusive questions about my divorce and prospects for remarriage. I am thankful that, since most of them are football buffs, they wait until half-time to ask me. I am thankful that Aunt Sylvia and Uncle Joe's house has that "lived-in" look. I am thankful that no one in my family is anything like Martha Stewart. I am thankful that, even though she is always redecorating, Aunt Sylvia doesn't ask me for my honest opinion of her furniture.

"I am thankful that there is only one holiday when I will be receiving fruitcakes filled with hard little green things. I am thankful that Thanksgiving is not "it." I am thankful that I did not burst out laughing at work when a colleague said, in all seriousness, "Well, it looks like Thanksgiving is going to fall on a Thursday again this year." I am thankful that I am not: a. penniless b. hopeless c. childless d. humorless. I am thankful that, despite our family's dysfunctions, neuroses, and miscommunications, we stick together—just as we're stuck to Aunt Sylvia's plastic-covered furniture."

It has been said that giving thanks is the most elemental form of worship. Gratitude is a recognition that we are alive and that we are connected to other living things and the earth. It is a reminder that all that comes to us is not so much something we deserve, as it is something that comes to us by grace. It is a recognition of the fullness of life, not just the things that make us happy, but the totality of living. It is an openness to what life is bringing us, and an openness to the lessons we can learn from it.

Gratitude comes with awareness. It comes with an expectation that we will always be surprised. It is not expecting that what we want will come our way, but it being open to what life offers us.

This past week I was driving along a street, focused on the next thing I was supposed to do, when the wind suddenly picked up a bunch of dry leaves and brought them in front of my windshield. As they danced in front of the car, I felt like I had been treated to some lovely spontaneous ballet intended just for me. It took me out of my preoccupation and put a smile on my face.

Sometimes no matter how much I may not be open to it, the universe has a way of reaching in and grabbing me and surprising me.

We all have those moments, when something lifts us out of our daily routines. We may look at a child sleeping and observe a peace that touches us deeply. We may be walking along and meet the smile of a stranger and somehow feel connected to everything around us. We may be hit in the face with rain and be reminded that it is good to not always have gear that keeps us dry.

Gratitude starts by being present. It starts by a willingness to get ourselves wet.

And as we are more open to receiving, more can come to us. There is a circular quality to it. If we can acknowledge the things we are grateful for, we may be better able to see what else we can be thankful for. As our awareness grows, so does our sense of gratitude and wonder. It is learning to see the world through a different lens. As we start to look, we can see more and more. We see how precious life really is.

Much of this comes with intentionality. I think of the story I read of a woman and how she starts her day.

She was an on-the-go person. She was driven at her work and at home. She looked at self help books, always looking for how she might improve herself, but none of them particularly spoke to her. When she reached her 40s, she had a revelation that she didn’t need to focus so much on what she needed to improve as much as she would focus on just being. She decided her focus would be on appreciating life.

So she has a morning ritual that grounds her every day. She wakes up at 6 a.m., to music coming from the radio beside her bed. She slowly gets up and sits at the end of the bed. She greets the morning and herself. She puts on her favorite robe and makes her way to the bathroom. She is intentional about each thing she does. She makes her morning coffee, she reads the Peanuts cartoon, she makes herself breakfast.

By tending to her morning time, she starts it off with a perspective that carries her through the day. She is not focused on what she doesn’t have as much as she is focused on what she does have. In this daily awareness, she makes time for herself to check in on what is happening in her life, and opens herself to the surprises that may come her way.

If we can see our life from this place, we are grounded in a sense of being connected to the whole. It may put us in a better place to receive whatever comes.

There are times in life that the last thing we feel is gratitude. We ask why something has happened to us. When we are thrown for a loop—when a relationship ends, when we get a diagnosis we weren’t expecting—we let the news sink in. And we experience all kinds of emotions—anger and grief and pain. We want to know why.

It is precisely at these times at we are confronted with the fact that we are not in control of things. We don’t know why some things happen and we are forced to look deeper for answers and for meaning.

If we can be present with life, we open ourselves to finding the way we need to go. The way out of the despair is in the despair itself. If we can stay with it and not be afraid, we can find our way. We are called to reach out to others to help us get there.

The gratitude may come when we reach a point where we can look back and see what lesson might have come from such an experience. We see people who were there with us. When we can look back and see why it was that way. We come to a place of acceptance.

It may be that the very thing that comes from such a time is that we learn to see our lives in a new way. It may be we learn to see our lives not so much from the perspective of what we don’t have as what we do have. We may come to have a very different perspective on the whole of our life.

As a minister I’m constantly struck by how we seem to reach out for meaning in times of despair. There is a life force that seems to emerge. When people are diagnosed with terminal illness, they struggle and try to figure it out, but there is something that keeps them going. There is something that makes them want to continue fighting. Even when we are in pain, we move toward living and finding hope. That is where faith comes in.

I remember sitting with a young father who had just lost his son a few days before. In the midst of his grief, he looked up at me and said, "I know that someday this is growing experience. I know some lessons will come of this. But right now it just hurts."

Even in the midst of pain, we look toward the path that will bring us where we need to go. We don’t know exactly where that will be, but at least have a sense of the direction where we will start. Healing means finding a new sense of wholeness—and we look to how it is we can get there.

In memorial services, the path to healing often seems to present itself. In the act of giving thanks for a life, we open ourselves to our grief. In the telling of stories and remembering and honoring, we find a balm for our sorrow. We come to see life in its fullness. Both in the pain and in the joy we experience.

A few weeks ago, at memorial for a young ceramic artist, several of his pots were displayed in front of the sanctuary. I have a lasting memory of those pots. I was struck by how the beauty of his art was a balm in the midst of a great deal of grief. The beauty he created honored his life and also helped to bring some healing to those in pain.

Our challenge is to be open to what might come. And in the process we have to be as fully ourselves as we can be.

There often seems to be a grace in the world that the right person will be in the right place at the right time. We can’t explain it, but they are. We may be caught up in our world, and not so much seeing what we have and much as what we don’t have. And sometimes the universe opens up and allows us to see our lives in a whole new context.

Writer Anne Lamott tells the story of her friend Rick, who has advanced cancer and is more than willing to drop everything to give Lamott’s son Sam a ride to school when she has a headache. She writes:

"I hate being the kind of person who tries to get someone with stage-four metastatic lung cancer to feel sorry for her just because she has a headache. (Though it was an ice-pick headache.) But the way I see things, God loves you the same whether you’re being elegant or not. It feels much better when you are, but even when you can’t fake it, God still listens to your prayers.

Again and again, I tell God I need help and God says, "Well, isn’t that fabulous? Because I need help too. So you go get that old woman over there some water, and I’ll figure out what we’re going to do about your stuff. Maybe Rick had told God (as he understands God) that he needed some energy that morning, and God had said, "Well, great, because Sam Lamott needs a ride to school. Could you do that for me? And I’ll be getting you some strength."

So we have to remember that in our living, and in being who we are, we are helping others out. If we can live in gratitude, we bring that to others. It means having faith in what will be. We put ourselves out there, and trust that whatever comes will be OK. Things are not in our control, but we go on faith that they will somehow work out.

If someone hands us a gift-wrapped package and we say thank you before opening it, that may seem a little premature. We should, after all, wait to see what is inside. But in saying thank you before we open it, we express a trust in the giver, that whatever is inside will be a gift we can use. What is in the box isn’t as important as how we approach it. It takes courage to be open to what might be inside.

We go on faith that we will know what we have to do and do it. We follow the force of life and trust that it will get us where we need to go. We may not be glad that something has happened, but we can step back and look at the meaning it has had for us. We are somehow different—changed by the experience.

We come to trust the reminders that life puts in our path. We learn to trust what we can and have faith in what we can’t know.

Every Saturday morning, I talk with my Aunt Helen back in Wisconsin. On any given morning, I may be feeling a variety of things. I may be tired from the week. I may be feeling burdened about something at the church. But whereever I find myself, I call my aunt Helen. She is in her late 70s. She has arthritis in her arms and hands and legs, which means she is in a good deal of pain. She doesn’t get out much. She talks about the pain and then quickly adds that others have it a lot worse. "Oh, I’ve got it pretty good," she says. She watches the Chicago Cubs and Judge Judy on television. When the Cubs are not on, she reminds me that the season can’t be far away.

She tells me what she and uncle George are making for lunch and I joke that I would like to come over for some. She says the coffee pot is always on. I tell her I’ll be right over. At some point in our conversation she tells me that she is thankful for what she has, and I know that she is. She doesn’t ask for much, and seems happy with what life has given her.

When I get caught up in my life and all that I have to do or don’t feel I have time to do, talking with aunt Helen usually bring me back to my center.

I’m thankful for my roots, I’m thankful that she is in my life. I’m thankful for what life has given me.

When I hang up the phone, whatever it may be that I’m fussing about is put into a different perspective. I remind myself to be present and to be mindful all that I have. I sit down and say a prayer to give thanks for all that is in my life. I am filled.

Words of the poet Rilke:

Earth isn’t this what you want: invisibly

to arise in us? Is it not your dream

to be some day invisible?

What, if not transformation, is your insistent commission?

Earth, dear one, I will! Oh, believe it needs

not one more of your springtimes to win me over.

One, just one, is already too much for my blood.

From afar I’m utterly determined to be yours.

You were always right and your sacred revelation is the intimate death.

Behold, I’m alive. On what? Neither childhood nor future

grows less… surplus of existence

is welling up in my heart.

May our hearts be full this Thanksgiving. May we know that surplus of existence and bring it—with gratitude—back into the world. Amen.

Prayer: Spirit of life, may we be always open to the fullness of life that is in us and around us. Help us to be present and not be afraid of life. May we reach out to those in need, and in our reaching out, may we find peace in our lives. May we trust in the grace of the world, and may it bring us to wholeness. Amen.

Benediction.

Give thanks for all that is your life—on this day and in all days. Go in love and go in peace. Amen.

Call to Worship:

In this season of thanksgiving, we come to celebrate all that life has brought us.

We bring our voices and our bodies, we bring our burdens and joys.

In this house of gratitude and hope, may each of us find our place at the table.

Come, let us worship together.

Copyright 1999 by Rev. Thomas Disrud. All rights reserved.