[Propertalk] Thanksgiving

[robertpmorrison at charter.net]

Here's my draft for tomorrow evening.

Happy celebrations, at every table!

Bob


THE EPISCOPAL CHURCH OF ST. ALBAN, ALBANY                          			 
THANKSGIVING EVE
DEUTERONOMY 8:7-18					 
26th NOVEMBER, 2014
2 CORINTHIANS 9:6-15			                            	 
PSALM 65
LUKE 17:11-19

		Before you know what kindness really is
		you must lose things, 1
	
So wrote Naomi Shihab Nye, a poet now living in San Antonio.

	But losing is so scary. Fear of losing can knock your feet out from 
under you. Fear of losing can not only spoil plans, it can disrupt hope.

	Yet is it not so? DO we not have to lose things – or, at the very 
least, put ALL – yes, ALL – of our things out there, being willing to 
have them be taken or to have them disappear, before we know the REAL 
meaning of kindness, of compassion, of love?

	We’re so used to having things at our fingertips, we’re accustomed to 
receiving gifts, that we forget what it’s like not to have them. You go 
to the tap in the kitchen and turn it on, without a thought about 
whether or not water will come out. But around the world, twice the 
population of the U.S. doesn’t have access to drinkable water. We turn 
the tap, and then walk away from the sink – to fetch a glass, pick up 
the phone, answer the door bell. And the water runs on.

	Now I know that turning off a running faucet in the kitchen here will 
not assuage the thirst of someone in Africa, nor on the East Coast of 
the U.S. It won’t even help anyone two blocks away. Well, it might, if 
that person were on the wrong side of a main water line repair. But you 
get the picture; something as simple as twisting the lever and having 
even a trickle of water come out – and we don’t think twice about 
mentally offering thanks.

	In a review of a book of short essays about music, the reviewer 
described the author with the telling phrase, James “Keller is good at 
alerting the reader to the significance of little things.”  2

	This is exactly what Scripture is designed to do. The first reading 
painted a picture of a new home for the Hebrews, a home as contrasted 
with their desert wanderings as it could be. The language is full of 
hyperbole – this will be a land in which there’s an endless supply of 
water and of foods of all kinds. We know that this wasn’t totally true. 
There would be droughts, there would be famines, there would be terrible 
fights between neigbours within and without the country. But needs would 
be met. The only prayer which God made was that the people would never 
forget their history and ALL the participants in it – ALL, including God 
and their former selves.

	Too often we ourselves, when things seem to be going half-well at all, 
too often we forget our own past – when we may have been challenged by 
illness, or separation from our human communities, as if seeing water 
exit the tap on the wall extinguishes memories of the time when the 
water was shut off. Too often we don’t think of those who – for loss of 
job, or the end of benefits, or serious illness, or catastrophic car 
failure – too often we don’t think of those whose water has been shut 
off for inability to pay, and for whom the turn-on of service is getting 
farther and farther beyond their reach.

	God calls us to discover the significance of little things, perhaps 
asking us to consider what Shihab Nye described in her poem, that we may 
have to lose things before the true significance of everything in life 
falls into place, in a sense like that one Samaritan, the despised 
foreigner, the outcast, who set aside immediate sharing with his family 
the joy of his healing until after he offered thanks to Jesus who’d 
transformed him.

	What the readings ask of us is that we put ourselves in the place of 
others, first the better to understand them and their needs, and second 
to help us to see what we can do, to see who we can become as we fit 
ourselves into the footsteps of Jesus.

	Looking at little things, perhaps we can learn to appreciate what 
Bishop Steven Charleston said the other day. “I am on the night shift of 
prayer, watching out for all those who may be frantic to have fun, or so 
far from fun they cannot remember how it feels to sleep, the late hour 
broken hearts, afraid to rest for fear of the memories, the graveyard 
shift workers who keep going while the rest of the world sleeps, the 
firefighters and the cops, the nurses and the waitresses, the invisible 
ones beneath the overpass lying on cardboard, the endless vigil keepers 
waiting for news, the hospital crew and the truck drivers, I am praying 
for them, awake to them, remembering them, sending out love to them, 
until the morning brings them home.”  3

	THIS is remembering that, at one time, we may have been in trouble, or 
stressed, or harassed, or tired, or hungry – in any number of deserts, 
always hoping, looking for a time and a land in which we could rest 
without always having to look over our shoulders, for fear of venomous 
snakes and scorpions sneaking up on us.
	Thinking of the other, losing ourselves for their sakes, if only for a 
short time, is where we’ll find the kindness, the love, the hope, that 
each of us prays will be ours.

	God doesn’t call most of us to a life of voluntary deprivation. There 
ARE some who sense and answer a call to some form of monasticism. But 
God doesn’t seek that of the majority of us. God simply asks of us the 
simple act of remembrance. Remember Sarah, and Miriam, and Deborah, and 
Hannah, and Mary. Remember Abraham, and Moses, and Joshua, and Ezekiel, 
and Joseph. Remember, as we see, and break, and taste the Bread at the 
Altar; remember as we pass the salads, and the rolls, and the potatoes; 
remember when we “have plenty to eat” and have a roof over our heads, do 
not forget how blessed we are.

  	A local non-profit agency has a prominently displayed sign: "It is 
true that we do not fully appreciate what we have until it is not there. 
Toilet paper, for example." Did you know that you can’t buy toilet paper 
with Food Stamps? Or laundry detergent?

	We have so much for which to be incredibly thankful. You can make your 
own mental lists – of friends, of family members, of strangers who 
smile, of enough clothes that you can afford to have one in the wash 
while you wear the other. Thank God we can see and be grateful for the 
little things as well as the great ones.

	And then there are the surprises. I have a good friend who’s been 
walking the Appalachian Trail for many months. With only a little more 
than a hundred miles to go, she’s almost finished, having slept in 
shelters and in her tent. But this afternoon an acquaintance met her and 
another hiker and took them to his home for bath, and a real bed, and 
hot meals tomorrow.

	I’m sure she’ll appreciate these far more than I would, especially 
right now. And, knowing Anne, I’m sure she’ll find a way to go back, to 
thank Gilliam.

	As you come to the Altar tonight; as you stand in the kitchen tonight 
and tomorrow; as you sit at table and talk and laugh with friends and 
family, I invite you to join me in thinking about all those acts of 
kindness you and I have encountered, and pray to God that you and I may 
be the means to make them true for others.

	Naomi wrote:
		Before you know what kindness really is
		you must lose things,
		feel the future dissolve in a moment
		like salt in a weakened broth.
		What you held in your hand,
		what you counted and carefully saved,
		all this must go so you know
		how desolate the landscape can be
		between the regions of kindness.
		How you ride and ride
		thinking the bus will never stop,
		the passengers eating maize and chicken
		will stare out the window forever.
		Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness,
		you must travel where the Indian in a white poncho
		lies dead by the side of the road.
		You must see how this could be you,
		how he too was someone
		who journeyed through the night with plans
		and the simple breath that kept him alive.
		Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside,
		you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.
		You must wake up with sorrow.
		You must speak to it till your voice
		catches the thread of all sorrows
		and you see the size of the cloth.
		Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore,
		only kindness that ties your shoes
		and sends you out into the day to mail letters and purchase bread,
		only kindness that raises its head
		from the crowd of the world to say
		it is I you have been looking for,
		and then goes with you everywhere
		like a shadow or a friend.

NOTES:

1 	Naomi Shihab Nye (born March 12, 1952) is a poet, songwriter, and 
novelist. She was born to a Palestinian father and American mother. 
Although she regards herself as a "wandering poet", she refers to San 
Antonio as her home. She says a visit to her grandmother in the village 
of Sinjil was a life-changing experience. She was the recipient of the 
2013 NSK Neustadt Prize for Children's Literature.

2	A review by Ivan Hewitt of “Chamber Music: A Listener’s Guide” by 
James M. Keller in BBC Music Magazine, June 2011. Page 105.

3	See 
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Native-AmericanIndigenous-Ministries-of-the-Episcopal-Church/121658134519767

Robert P Morrison
Interim Vicar
The Episcopal Church of St Alban
PO Box 1556
Albany OR  97321   541-921-1076 (cell)
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