Preparing for Thanksgiving

(Please note: No Beacon Lite the week of Thanksgiving.)

 

Near the end of The Temple, seventeenth century poet and priest George Herbert begins a poem entitled "Gratefulnesse" with these lines:

Thou that hast giv'n so much to me,

Give one thing more, a gratefull heart.

Herbert then acknowledges that, despite God's constant outpourings of grace, he perpetually knocks at God's door asking for more. He closes his poem confessing that his petitions will not be silenced:

Till I a thankfull heart obtain

                                      Of thee:

Not thankfull, when it pleaseth me;

As if thy blessings had spare dayes;

But such a heart, whose pulse may be

                                      Thy praise.

           

"Not thankfull, when it pleaseth me." What refreshing honesty. When we limit our thanksgiving to pleasures, we reduce our capacity to love. Perhaps the clearest illustration of that comes when we mourn the death of someone we love. If we offer God only tears, we denigrate the blessings we have received from our loved one and at least temporarily ignore the many ways that saint remains a part of us. So we gather to offer thanksgiving for that person's life not because we find the moment pleasant, but because anything less would be wrong.

Gratefulness, like greed, is more than a characteristic. It is a way of life. The most grateful people I have known would never make it onto a Fortune 500 list of influential people. Yet, their daily lives abounded with joy and thanksgiving. Those who have less often have profound awareness of what they have. Awareness of their blessings exceeds longing to acquire more. That reflects not slothfulness, but rather a choice to celebrate life as a gift worth celebrating, even when the celebration requires courage.

Too many prayers of gratitude sound like lists of personal achievements offered to conceal profound sadness. Few enter sadness, ingratitude, or loneliness more deeply than those who claim to have earned all or most of what is most important to them. Thanksgiving that flows only from achievement reaches no farther than one candle can shine.

As we prepare for Thanksgiving next week, please recall not only the blessings of sun-filled days of pleasure, but also those that came and will come in more troubled times. Such reflections can help us to recall how companionship found us when we thought we were alone and how goodness and mercy followed us even when our path darkened. Such reflections can also make us more aware of and grateful for present pleasures. Elizabeth Barrett Browning more eloquently offers similar advice in this prayer/poem:

  I praise Thee while my days go on;

                        I love Thee while my days go on;

                        Through dark and dirty, through fire and frost,

                        With emptied arms and treasures lost,

                        I thank Thee while my days go on.

Our days go on, and in them we have creation, each other, and God. Blessings have no "spare dayes." May we choose daily to have and seek "a gratefull heart" that beats with praise to God.

           

Happy Thanksgiving, a week early!

LP