Thanksgiving Sunday
November 18, 2012
Philippians 4:4-9
Celebrate God all day, every day. I mean, revel in him! Make it as clear as
you can to all you meet that you’re on their side, working with them and not
against them. Help them see that the Master is about to arrive. He could
show up any minute!
Don’t fret or worry. Instead of worrying, pray. Let petitions and praises
shape your worries into prayers, letting God know your concerns. Before
you know it, a sense of God’s wholeness, everything coming together for
good, will come and settle you down. It’s wonderful what happens when
Christ displaces worry at the center of your life.
Summing it all up, friends, I’d say you’ll do best by filling your minds and
meditating on things true, noble, reputable, authentic, compelling,
gracious—the best, not the worst; the beautiful, not the ugly; things to
praise, not things to curse. Put into practice what you learned from me,
what you heard and saw and realized. Do that, and God, who makes
everything work together, will work you into his most excellent harmonies.
Do you say grace before your Thanksgiving meal - before all your meals?
The main purpose behind saying grace, I believe, is mindfulness - taking a
moment to recognize the multiple, interrelated sources of your meal and
how they have blessed you in the moment. So many people, creatures and
systems are involved in your meals. Be mindful of them and thank them all.
Sometimes things get in the way of our gratitude. I came across this video
on YouTube that was both funny and a good reminder to me that one of the
things that often kills my gratitude is my cynicism. It’s by Lou and Peter
Berryman – “Uncle Dave’s Grace”
Thanksgiving day Uncle Dave was our guest
Who reads the Progressive which makes him depressed
We asked Uncle Dave if he’d like to say grace
A dark desolation crept over his face
Thanks he began as he gazed at his knife
To poor Mr. Turkey for living his life
All crowded and cramped in a great metal shed
Where life was a drag then they cut off his head
Thanks he went on for the grapes in my wine
Picked by sick women of seventy nine
Scrambling all morning for bunch after bunch
Then brushing the pesticide off of their lunch
Thanks for the stuffing all heaped on my fork
Shiny with sausage descended from pork
I think of the trucks full of pigs that I see
And can’t help imagine what they think of me
Continuing, I’d like to thank if you please
Our salad bowl hacked out of tropical trees
And for this mahogany table and chair
We thank all the jungles that used to be there
For cream in our coffee and milk in our mugs
We thank all the cows full of hormones and drugs
Whose calves are removed at a very young age
And force-fed as veal in a minuscule cage
Oh thanks for the furnace that heats up these rooms
And thanks for the rich fossil fuel it consumes
Corrupting the atmosphere ounce after ounce
But we’re warm and toasty and that is what counts
I’m grateful he said for these clothes on my back
Lovely and comfy and cheap off the rack
Fashioned in warehouses noisy and cold
In China by seamstresses seven years old
And thanks for my silverware setting that shines
In memory of miners who died in the mines
Worn down by the shoveling of tailings in piles
Whose runoff destroys all the rivers for miles
We thank the reactors for our chandelier
Although the plutonium won’t disappear
For hundreds of decades it still will be there
But a few more Chernobyls and who’s gonna care
Sighed Uncle Dave though there’s more to be told
The wine’s getting warm and the bird’s getting cold
And with that he sat down as he mumbled again
Thank you for everything, amen
We felt so guilty when he was all through
It seemed there was one of two things we could do
Live without food in the nude in a cave
Or next year have someone say grace besides Dave
Two men shared a hospital room, both very sick. One man was near the
window and the other man had to stay flat on his back in his bed away from
the window. They struck up a friendship and talked for hours on end. The
man near the window would describe the scene out of the window in great
detail–the colors, the children playing, couples walking by, the city skyline.
One day he even described a passing parade. The man away from the
window loved the descriptions, and cherished every word he heard from his
friend.
After several days of this conversation the man by the window passed
peacefully in his sleep. The other man asked to be moved to the window
bed, excited to see all the amazing sights that he had heard described. He
slowly propped himself up on his elbow to look out the window. He was
surprised to see that he faced a blank wall. He called the nurse in and told
her what had happened. She said, “Well you should know that this man
was blind. He couldn’t even see the wall. Perhaps he was just trying to lift
your spirits.”
The man by the window had an incredible perspective, a vision well beyond
eye sight. His window on the world was optimism and gratitude. In his mind
he saw only beauty and he shared it with his friend. Gratitude is the gift of
perspective. It doesn’t depend on circumstances or good fortune. It is the
gift of being able to choose where you place your focus.
What’s your window onto the world? Your mission should you choose to
accept it is to see the world through the window of gratitude. If we truly
recognized the miracle of being alive, we would walk around with our jaw
constantly dropped, our hands on our head and crying out, “OH MY
GOODNESS.” Life is amazing and we have the privilege of participating.
You are surrounded by incredible beauty and filled with amazing strength.
Soak in the power of gratitude. Choose something right now to be grateful
for. Choose anything. Choose one thing. Give thanks for being alive. Thank
your heart for beating without having to even think about it. Show gratitude
to your perspective that is able to see the miracles that surround you. And if
you are a pessimist, give thanks for your ability to choose to be worried and
give thanks for your active imagination. Give thanks for any one thing. Then
give thanks for your ability to be thankful. One becomes two, the list grows
quickly and spreads and very soon you have created a whole chain
reaction of gratitude.
I heard a Hindu spiritual teacher asked the question, “What is the worst
karma a person can experience on earth? What is the greatest difficulty,
the harshest circumstances?”
You would think he might have said poverty or illness or depression. He
said, “The worst karma is to be ungrateful. If you suffer from ingratitude
then it won’t matter what goodness and miracles exist in your life, you won’t
be capable of receiving them. In contrast, if you are grateful then even in
the most challenging of circumstances, you will be able to recognize the
many gifts that you are receiving all the time.”
Either way, it’s a choice, and either way it comes back to you. Karma isn’t a
cycle of reward and punishment. It’s the reality that if you fill your mind with
gratitude you will dwell in a world of appreciation, and if you fill your mind
with problems and negativity, you shouldn’t be surprised to live in a
problematic and negative world. The world is as you see it.
We have incredible ability to find problems and anxiety, don’t we?
Sometimes the miracles are staring us in the face and we still find a
negative angle. A grandmother is walking with her 5-year-old grandson on
the beach, when suddenly a wave comes and drags the boy out to sea.
The grandmother looks up to the sky, shakes her fist and says, “God, this is
unacceptable, unbearable. You cannot take an innocent child.” And just as
those words come out of her mouth, another wave comes and brings the
child smiling back at her feet. She picks up the child in her arms, looks up
to the sky and says, “My grandson had a hat! Where is his hat?”
Catch yourself when you start complaining. When you hear yourself
moaning about the weather or how much work you have or how
inconvenient this is or how boring that is, remind yourself that you get to
partake in the miracle and gift of being alive and everything is amazing.
Watch your whole outlook on life change, and your whole experience of life
improve.
. Gratitude’s children include optimism, generosity and kindness. Her
cousins include abundance, joy and contentment. Gratitude was always
there, just waiting for your attention. Once you find her, you unlock all sorts
of other delights. As St. Paul said in our reading:
Summing it all up, friends, I’d say you’ll do best by filling your minds and
meditating on things true, noble, reputable, authentic, compelling,
gracious—the best, not the worst; the beautiful, not the ugly; things to
praise, not things to curse.
I was waiting for the Bart in Lafayette when a train pulled up at the platform
coming from the other direction. This well-dressed woman exits the train.
She realizes that she has only one glove, and the other is on the train. She
can see it on the seat right by the door where she was sitting. There is the
announcement that the doors of the train are about to close. She has to
make a choice; jump back on the train to get her glove or shrug her
shoulders and walk away. She does neither. She takes a beautiful third
option. She throws the remaining glove back through the doors just before
they close. I don’t know what she was thinking. Maybe she thought
someone else might as well have both gloves. Who knows!
Whatever her reasons, what she did is a wonderful metaphor for letting go
of the things in our life that weigh us down, freeing ourselves from our
attachment to things that ultimately don’t matter and keep us from living in
peace of mind and gratitude. We spend so much energy clinging to the
things that weigh us down and keep us from living in gratitude. So toss
whatever it is that is holding you back onto a moving train. Let it go.
You were given a piece of paper with your worship bulletin. Write down
something in your own life that is keeping you from living in gratitude – put
it in the offering plate and I will place it on the altar and we will pretend that
we are tossing in the train and letting God take it away.