Thanksgiving 2008
by William Murchison
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Thankful for … what?!
The question is bound to surface the moment heads incline in reverence at the Thanksgiving table, over pre-dinner drinks, post-dinner drinks, kitchen clean up, trash take out.
Answers will vary. What won’t vary is the perception that Thanksgiving 2008 brings trials of a sort not experienced in the United States of America in some years. An annus horribilis, this year, a stinker, a mess. Browse the newspaper, and hardly anything good presents itself for inspection. Job layoffs, stocks headed south, General Motors in trouble, bankers begging, budgets busted at the governmental and the domestic level alike, home foreclosures, credit seizures in the marketplace. Aarghhh!
How did we get where we are and what does it mean? The second question is, likely, the more troublesome of the two. What next? The terrifying word “depression” crops up even in news accounts by no means suggesting the possibility of such.
Thanks for … what? It takes a little rubbing of the temples to consider, nor would a crackling fire on a cold afternoon come amiss. Thankful for the deep things, the rooted realities may be the partial answer. Memory is key to unlocking the door on gratitude.
There were times when … a sentence such as that could go anywhere. There were times when new settlers on new shores coped with hunger and disease and bitter New England winters. Or saw and heard danger in every bird call or suddenly sundered twig outside the fort. And still they kept going. There were times, still vivid in legend, when Americans killed each other to affirm opposed ideals—the preservation of the federal union on one hand, on the other hand the preservation of local rights and the “peculiar institution” of human bondage. There were times when long lines of men waited wearily on public sidewalks for news of job openings, news that too rarely came. And still, somehow, they kept going.
There was a time when bombs, thousands of miles away, brought a stop to normal life on a quiet Sunday morning, and alerted families to the awful prospect that life as they had lived it was over, not to resume, if ever, for quite a while. And still they kept going: soldiers, sailors, workers, wives, husbands, children, churches. Because that was how things were, and with reality there just isn’t any arguing.
One could go on. When do we finally get life right for everyone? When do the wars stop? When does everybody have a new SUV and all he wants to eat? Durned if we know. We keep going anyway. Someone says a word, strikes up a tune, makes a gesture, and it’s onward, come on, let’s get out of here.
A lady to whom I was related, born in 1911, a time when a child was by no means assured a safe passage to maturity, was wont to tell her children the story of a convict she’d read about. This worthy had experienced in a single day the delirious joy of escaping the clutches of the FBI and the crash of expectations when he was recaptured and again the handcuffs went on. How’d he feel? The convict sighed: In this life you got to take the bad with the good. It struck the lady who told the story as deep, if accidental, wisdom. Yes, that was how it was: life as mixture of the sad and the sweet. You had to keep going, that was all.
Thankful for … what? For numerous things, not all of them baked fresh and laid on the table. Among the rooted realities of our vexing time is human freedom and a larger abundance of human good will than we often think exists. It means there’s the chance, always, to move from the sad to the sweet in a land blessed by a Creator who chastens those he loves: who won’t, in mercy, spare them the emptiness of life lived without challenge, remorse and failure—these being the great shapers of human achievement. We keep going, somehow, to the next Thanksgiving.
COPYRIGHT 2008 CREATORS SYNDICATE, INC.
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1 Comment by robert m. peters on 27 November 2008:
I give thanks that God in His great mercy has made me aware that I am fallen and has thereby emancipated me from the evil of belief in my own goodness which can, among other things, bring me to make even war on “lesser” men for some “noble cause.”
I give thanks that God in His great mercy has made me aware, in my fallen state, of His Grace made possible because He wrote Himself into history as the Second Person of the Trinity, the Christ, Jesus of Nazareth, and as my Kinsman Redeemer through His passion, death and resurrection reconciled me unto Himself.
As my pagan ancestors, I give thanks at this time of year for Hugin and Munin, Thought and Memory, as my mind goes back over Thanksgivings, Advent Tides, and Christmases past. My birthday was this past Monday. I was born on Thanksgiving Day in 1949. My mother edging toward ninety-two named a score of folks present on the day of my birth. Including my mother and me, only three of us are left. We spent hours Monday telling stories about each of those who are now a part of that “great cloud of witnesses” who pray for us as we continue to run the race which they have long since finished.
I give thanks for yesterday as I journeyed up Louisiana 155 between Ashland and Saline and experienced a wonderful irony: an proud tom turkey of the wild variety pranced across the narrow, tree-encroached road followed by six hens, either oblivious to or in courage mocking that it was the day before Thanksgiving.
I give thanks that I will have the opportunity and strength to utter a Thanksgiving prayer today.
2 Comment by Etienne Gervaise on 27 November 2008:
Well said, Mr Murchison. We all call upon God during hard times, but Deuteronomy 28 warns nations to thank God during the good times lest we become the tail and not the head, the borrower and not the lender. The listed consequences of neglecting God are very dire and specific.
But I wish reporters would stop asking people, “How do you feel…?” I don’t think feelings are that important, because it reminds me of a horrible 70s pop song.
3 Comment by Grumpy Old Man on 27 November 2008:
Mr Peters, your claque is clamoring for you to write and publish your memoirs.
4 Comment by JE on 28 November 2008:
I wonder, though, whether anything in this column has anything to do with Resurrection? Couldn’t everything above have been said by a decent pagan — without any Covenants, Old and legal or New and substantial?
As spot-on to American history as this column seems, and precisely because it sounds fair to America, the Christ-less-ness presented makes our Thanksgiving sound totally secular, and religious only in the society-binding sense.
(This is no more than an ill-considered response to a column intended, I think, to encourage its readers, but contrariwise having rather depressed me!)
5 Comment by MattSwartz on 1 December 2008:
JE,
Wherever and whenever people are honestly bound together, it’s due to the merciful intervention of the Holy Spirit.
I’m all for acknowledging Christ, but there’s a lot to be said for resting in the knowledge that He’s with us always, not just when we name-check Him.
6 Comment by Joseph Salemi on 1 December 2008:
JE @ 4
But that is exactly what Thanksgiving has become at this point in American history — a totally secular holiday. Surely you knew that.
7 Comment by JE on 1 December 2008:
Joseph Salemi @5:
Yes, but the column talks about things *actually* to be thankful for. The old ‘chastisement is beneficial’ line could have been said by a Zeus-worshipper or an atheist — and I don’t see much else ‘to be thankful for’ in the article.
Talk of ’soldiering on until next Thanksgiving for the sake of general human achievement’ is more appropriate as a reply to the question ‘why don’t we all kill ourselves?’ (a favorite of the thoughtful pagan, not always well-met) than anything specifically having to do with ‘making all things new’. But feast-days, for Christians, are intended to signify and embody ‘making all things new’. The very cyclical repetitiousness of calendrical holidays is intended to constitute this, in part: you remember last Thanksgiving pretty well, and maybe we’re having turkey again this year, but it’s new and fresh for the thirtieth time! in and on account of the Resurrection.
But perhaps I’m being unfair to the column, which may deliberately have been adopting or rhetorically addressing a modern secular point of view rather more than I originally thought.
8 Comment by TJF on 1 December 2008:
Mr. Murchison is one of the rarest birds of North America: a pious Anglican. As a former fellow-sufferer with him, I know how difficult it is to speak of faith in public, especially when one is a syndicated columnist addressing a broad audience of cynical conservatives. I think JE’s suspicion in the last paragraph is quite shrewd and absolutely right.
9 Comment by J. Meng on 1 December 2008:
First of all, I offer thanksgiving to God everyday for the fact that I am. I thank Him for my parents, siblings, and all of my relatives and friends and neighbors. I am grateful for the land I was born in. I love this country and have traveled across it; have camped, hunted, and fished in some of its most beautiful settings. I offer thanksgiving to Him for having given me the gift of Faith, for the power to assent to His revelations and to worship Him as He wants to be worshipped. Although this might sound weird, I thank Him for the travails and obstacles He has placed in my life, because even though I have failed more times than I want to recount, they are for my well-being. I have thanked Him for the employment he has brought me so that I could earn a living. While Thanksgiving is a meaningful and symbolic, formal holiday, our thanks should be everyday. And, Mr. Murchison, thank you for this article in which you invite us to give our reasons for thanksgiving.