SCRIPTURE – translated by Stephen Mitchell in A Book of Psalms
From Psalm 1: Blessed are those who have grown beyond their greed,
who have put an end to their hatred and no longer nourish illusions.
They delight in the way things are and keep their hearts open, day and night.
They are like trees planted near flowing rivers,
which bear fruit when they are ready.

From Psalm 4: Even in the midst of great pain, I praise you, God, for that which is.
I will not deny my grief or close myself to this pain.
I will pray for whatever comes to me and ask to receive whatever gift it brings.
For you, God, have put a joy in my heart, greater than all the world’s riches,
and I will lie down trusting even the darkness,
for I know that even there, you are with me.

SERMON – “This week,” says Marv Hiles in his book An Anthology of Hope, “emerges from the seas of weeks like an island of repose, a gathering, a refuge for feeling, a time of Thanksgiving for the human spirit and for the little daily things and for all that lies bountifully on our tables.”

That is what I love about Thanksgiving: it emerges from the overlapping and blending weeks of the summer and fall. We do pause this week, as we gather, in one way or another, to observe our version of Thanksgiving, a holiday that transcends our religious, cultural, and political divisions.

When it goes well, Thanksgiving can be that island of repose celebrating the human spirit made manifest in family and friends, however close or not, however delightful or wacky. When it doesn’t go well, Thanksgiving becomes the material for drama and for sitcoms, like the classic episode of the TV show “Friends,” when Joey remembers every single Thanksgiving as the day his parents announced they were getting divorced.

Thanksgiving is tricky when it slips into generalities of thankfulness: for family, for friends, for food, for our home, for our health, for our country. All of those are true and important, yet they can easily become so all-encompassing that we hardly feel their impact.

On the other hand, nothing shuts down my kids and grandkids quicker than being asked, at Thanksgiving dinner, to name something they are thankful for. If they manage to move out of an anxious silence, then generally things deteriorate into the silly. It is possible that is a unique result of their growing up in a family with TWO ministers and, over the years, having to listen to so many of their parents/ grandparents’ sermons.

So the crux of this Thanksgiving sermon for me is how to talk about gratitude in ways that get beyond the already known generalizations or the discomfort of not knowing what to say. I am offering three very personal thoughts about celebrating thankfulness in my daily life, in times when the words “at least” are the only way I can express my gratitude, and in learning to practice the more difficult third degree of gratitude.

I believe that gratitude is an attitude toward life itself, a constant awareness and practice of thankfulness. That gratitude is best expressed for me, not in general sweeping terms, but in specific experiences and memories. That’s why I invited you, at the beginning of the service, to consider the memory of a specific Thanksgiving and what particular sense of gratitude arose from that experience.
I remember the Thanksgiving when my son Chris was 20 years old, just finishing basic training in the Air Force in San Antonio, Texas. He had only four hours of leave in the very late afternoon on Thanksgiving Day, with no family or friends nearby. I am forever thankful for the unnamed older man, the owner of a restaurant on the River Walk in San Antonio. He had just finished cleaning up and closing his restaurant, when he noticed Chris and his buddy, in uniform, wandering around, looking a bit lost and lonely and hungry. This gentlemen stopped, re-opened his restaurant, invited them in, and put together two plates of left-overs to feed them Thanksgiving dinner, taking care of my son Chris at a time when I could not.
(At the 9:15 service Anne Casella, Domenic Durante and Ashley Pennypacker Hill each shared a Thanksgiving memory and gratitude, as did Madeline Davidson, Skip Everitt and Diana Tonnessen at the 11:15 service.)

This awareness of gratitude can be an on-going spiritual practice throughout the year. It might be a gratitude journal, writing each day about what I am thankful for. It might be a specific thankfulness as part of my prayers. What currently works for me is to name something I am thankful for each day either at breakfast or at dinner. That way, if I can’t do it at breakfast, I can make it happen at dinner! The key to any thankfulness practice is adopting gratitude as an attitude, in whatever way we can express that regularly for ourselves.

My mother Evelyn was never one to articulate a lot of feelings. When she was in her 90s, Larry and I often brought her to the lake for dinner. She especially loved it when we brought along take-out Chinese food. One day, as she sat on the porch with us, she finished all of her chicken chow mein, put down her fork, looked around and said, “I sure hope heaven is as good as this.” Those words stay with me as a sweet memory of my mom, more than just about anything else she ever said. And I am so thankful for that moment. Thanksgiving in specifics, my friends, touches the soul and brings light to life.
Rosemary Trommer, in her poem How it Might Continue, speaks of the impact of savoring and sharing these moments of thankfulness and joy.

Wherever we go, there is the chance for joy, whole orchards of amazement,
one more reason to always travel with our pockets full
of grateful exclamation marks, so that we might scatter them for others
like apple seeds. Some will dry out, soe will blow away,
but some will take root and grow exuberant groves of long thin fruits
that resemble one hand clapping with so much enthusiasm
as they flutter back and forth that people for years to come
will swear that the world is filled with applause and
will fill their own pockets with new seeds of thankfulness to scatter.

Then there are the times when our personal thankfulness comes down to saying “at least”: at least nothing awful happened, or at least I got through the day, or at least it was my car that got totaled and not me ….. I am sure that each of us can think of a time when those words “at least” were appropriate words of gratitude for us to say ourselves in a situation that could have been worse.

Two years ago, I discovered at my annual physical that my platelet count was elevated, a situation that puts me at a higher risk of clots and strokes. That led me to the fine doctors at the UF Hematology Department and to a diagnosis of a genetic mutation in my bone marrow. It is not curable, but at least it is treatable by a daily oral chemo drug, and at least it isn’t a more difficult treatment. There are side effects of the drug, but at least they aren’t severe. This blood disorder, in rare cases, can progress, but at least if it does progress, the docs are optimistic about treatment for that as well.

All of this is true, for which I am immensely grateful, and I do often say every one of those “at leasts”. Yet I offer a word of caution for this particular expression of gratitude. I must confess that my feathers can get a bit ruffled if anyone, other than my doc, says “at least” to me about this condition. When someone else says that, I always wonder if that person thinks I don’t already know that or if that person is, even unknowingly, somewhat dismissing the impact this situation has on my life.

So, when it comes to gratitude that needs those words “at least,” in my experience those words are most helpful and hopeful I say them myself, and I’d prefer someone else just say to me, “Oh, so how are you doing? What’s it like for you?”

I find what I call the third degree of thankfulness to be the most difficult for me. What happens to my attitude of gratitude in really tough times when I am hurt or in pain, when I am grieving or overwhelmed, when I have made a decision that turned out to be completely wrong, or when I have carelessly or unintentionally hurt someone else?

This issue is front and center for me this year. In my personal life, I have an ongoing hurtful struggle as well as a lot of pain I am carrying from another situation I simply can’t resolve myself. In the larger realm, like many folks, I am on a long journey of raising my own consciousness about the racial inequity that is embedded in our history and culture and that continues in our nation, our community, in our everyday lives and in me. It is a heart-rending journey of awareness for all of us who travel that path.
I am not thankful for what brings me pain or regret, nor for anything that causes you pain. I am not thankful for the pain that exists in our country in so many ways right now. So please don’t go away thinking that is my message. I do not have to be – you do not have to be – thankful for pain. Yet I am working to recognize what I can learn from those difficult situations, and I can be grateful for that awareness and I can use it to go forward in my life. I recently heard one wise woman say, “When it is pointed out to me that I am or have been racially unaware or insensitive, I remind myself to say:
“I will learn from that; thank you.”

Part of my Thanksgiving this year is my intention not to discount or bury or overlook my own part in painful times, but to face them, to vent, to rant, to pray, to cry – and whatever else I need to do – and then to lean into that pain, to discover something from the experience that I can take forward. And I am filled with overwhelming gratitude for the opportunities and for the people in my life who allow me to have a do-over.

Jeanne Lohmann, in her poem “Praise What Comes,” addresses this third degree of thankfulness:
Surprising as unplanned kisses, all you haven’t deserved of days and solitude,
your body’s immoderate good health that lets you work
in many kinds of weather. Praise! Praise talk with just about anyone,
and quiet intervals, books that are your food and your hunger;
nightfall and walks before sleep.
Praising these for practice, perhaps you will come at last to
praise grief and the wrongs you never intended.
At the end there may be no answers and only a few very simple questions:
Did I love? Did I finish my task in the world?
Did I learn at least one of the many names of God?
At the intersections, the boundaries where one life began and another ended,
the jumping-off places between fear and possibility, at the ragged edges of pain,
did I catch the smallest glimpse of the holy?

I believe this is what the Psalmist was expressing in the scripture passage today:
Even in the midst of great pain, I praise you, God, for that which is.
I will not deny my grief or close myself to this pain.
I will pray for whatever comes to me and ask to receive whatever gift it brings.

I commend to all of us a celebration of Thanksgiving week that includes time to personally reflect on specific moments for which we are thankful as well as on those “at least it wasn’t worse” times. And perhaps you may choose to revisit a difficult time in the past year and pray for what you have learned as you also pray for recovery and for grace. Robert Kennedy often quoted Aeschylus saying, “Even in our sleep, pain that cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart and, in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom by the grace of God.”

May we trust that our gratitude – in all the ways it comes to us, even when it comes in that place between fear and possibility – that our gratitude will open our hearts, and our souls, to a glimpse of the Holy, the Holy that is present with us both in the light and in the darkness. Amen.

I invite you to join me in prayer, silently echoing the words after me:
In the gift of this new day,
In the gift of the present moment,
In the gift of time and eternity intertwined.
May I be thankful,
May I be attentive,
May I be open to new stirrings of your Spirit. Amen.

*BENEDICTION – May God be with you, in light and in darkness,
before you, behind you, and within you,
this Thanksgiving and in the days and weeks to come. May it be so!

Sandy Reimer – November 24, 2019