November 22, 2015

Job 2:8

There is nothing that whispers, growls, suggests, invites, and incarnates our worship theme of “delicious ambiguity” like Thanksgiving. Am I right? It is the holiday that puts on a sweet company face. On the delicious side of things it can be full of wonderful food and family and happy memories, and reconnection, parades, and football. At its most tasty, it is a communal spiritual exercise that strengthens our hearts with gratitude. On the ambiguity side, it can be too full of food and family and memories, and reconnection, and parades, and football–jammed with unrealistic, Norman Rockwell-ish expectations–a mixed day–when overindulgence in blessings may cause illness, where those who experience loneliness are cut even deeper, and those who hunger feel even more isolated and deprived than ever. Regardless if you stay home or travel far, it is not easy, sometimes, to get to Thanksgiving.

For a few years now and particularly at this time of year, I have been occupied with ponderings–not so much about the ambiguities of the holidays, for I think that is just the nature of things, but rather about gratitude itself–thanksgiving as a spiritual practice. What does it mean to be thankful? And when we are thankful, is it always followed by the preposition for? Being thankful is something I feel a lot, but I do wonder how conditional and simple and smug it is to say that… it seems that, comparatively speaking, my life has been serenely easy, so far. I don’t live in Syria. The poorest I have ever been was not poor. I have benefited from arbitrary privilege and so I am not at all sure what my thanksgiving chutzpah might be made of. I wonder if I might have a fair weather sort of grateful heart. That is one of the central questions in the book of the Job–are faith and gratitude and a belief in God or the benevolence of life conditional on living on easy street? How challenging is it to practice gratitude when the news is bad, the tragedies of the world overwhelming, and when we ourselves or those we love are suffering? There is a fair amount of social pressure to affirm aphorisms like “it is all good, give thanks in all circumstances, don’t worry, be happy, and just count your blessings,” and I must confess that when I look around at our world, call me Eeyore, but hearing those exhortations sometimes just makes me feel grumpy and not thankful at all.

Because gratitude is ambiguous to me. We listen to NPR or read about what is happening here and around our world and take in the knowledge that for much of the population of this planet every day is a day lived in fear and deprivation, all their lives existing in what Zora Neale Hurston called “the meanest moment of eternity.” And it is not all good and I do not give thanks in all things.

And on the other hand–remember when Sandy said in her sermon the other week that preachers so often say, “here’s this… but on the other hand…?” This is that moment. On the other hand, I am ambiguous, because within every tragic and unbearably mean moment of eternity there is the undeniable presence of the helpers, the noble, the blessed who choose a radically compassionate response to hatred and violence that reveals the content of their character and reminds all of us who we are and may become. And I believe what Job said to his wife in the middle of his suffering, that we may not just expect to accept the good and not also know the bad, and I know that there were/are those times in my life and I suspect there are/were in your life, too, when you were completely broken all apart and when somehow, inside all of that were unexplainable blessings that came in spite of it all. But that is a hard saying. It is ambiguous. Because, there are blessings. . There are blessings. Ambiguous blessings–real pain, tragedy, no excuse, no denial. And wrapped within, somehow, is often blessing to be roughly, gradually discovered. I love Alanis Morissette’s teaching on this subject. Thank U, Noah, for remind us what she says. (Noah sings “Thank U”)

So, thank you, all good gifts, all beauty and plenty and harvest, and cool, sweet autumn, and family around, and the bounty of all our blessings, AND thank you, disillusionment. Thank you frailty, thank you consequence, thank you nothingness, thank you silence. Thank you. Thank you, friend of a different race or religion or cultural experience when you speak truth to me and challenge my assumptions and my self-righteousness and my pat answers. And thank you life for the chance to give and to receive, not just more mashed potatoes on Thanksgiving, though that is no small thing in a world that is hungry–but thank you for the unease and the doors we must open to each other to make peace, and thank you for grace offered time and again because I need it. We need it. I may not have learned to…without you… and thank you warm clothes and thank you digestion and thank you messes to clean up and thank you grace offered and thank you forgiveness. And thank you recovery and thank you close calls and thank you holy moments sunshine-ish and quiet rain and by the sea and at the prairie. And thank you work and thank you generous and thank you old age and thank you time passing and thank you babies and birds and thank you for another chance for me or God or you to try it again.

Because where there is life there is hope…and even beyond… a somber, joyous, mysterious, full, and empty blessedness. Unbidden it comes, feeling grateful, not just when we’ve gotten good news. Sometimes gratitude rises from us as we rehearse the frailty of our own limitations and taste it as we eat the delicious salty ambiguity of our own tears, Thank you for? Yes, definitely…so much to say “thank you for…” and thank you before, during, after, around, between, with, in addition to, beneath, beyond, in spite of, because of, in the middle. Because a heart of gratitude shapes us and often, the circumstances, too. The same old apple pie tastes sweeter sometimes, the usual moments of awareness shine with sharper clarity. And in a way that is mysterious we have a chance to shape our own reality with gratitude.

Heather Murray Elkins writes this memory of being at her father’s house for the holidays: “I’d seen it all my life. A heavy vase, holding its own on the shelves. It is a family memory, and therefore, my identity. My father holds it in his hands, turning it as he tells its story. After the bombing stopped, village women would cautiously hunt for the artillery shell casings, discarded in the fighting. Each casing was reshaped, polished, and etched. Sometimes silver was beaten into the sides, shaped like blossoming flowers. A weapon turns into a vase. It takes strong hands to turn weapons of death into instruments of peace, and a fierce imagination.'”

A fierce imagination is what is called for some Thanksgivings… to find ourselves wrapped in the mysterious action described in the psalm reading for today–the spiritual work of rebuilding what has been ruined and recreating what was lost, healing the broken heartedness and being medicine for the wounds, lifting up the afflicted and giving them courage. A fierce and imaginative heart filled with gratitude helps shape denial into acceptance, chaos to order, confusion to clarity. It can turn a simple meal of just bread and wine into a feast, a new country into a home, a stranger into a friend. Gratitude makes sense of our past, brings peace for today and creates a future conceived in hope and celebration.

Let us, if our hearts are sad or if they are glad, find ourselves renewed as we share gratitude for, with, through, and beyond, this present day. May we lift up our hands and hearts together to be instruments of peace in the world. For we have bread today and we have drink today and more than enough to share. The old churchy word for communion is eucharist, which means “Thank You!” Thank you. And so, from our hearts of thanksgiving, shall we play music, eat together, invite the stranger in, remember our blessings, and then become the blessing for others, remade by holy ambiguity and delicious, fierce, faith-filled imagination. Let it be. Thank you. Amen.