Thanksgiving Day
Almighty and gracious Father, we give you thanks for the fruits of the earth in their season and for the labors of those who harvest them. Make us, we pray, faithful stewards of your great bounty, for the provision of our necessities and the relief of all who are in need, to the glory of your Name; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.
So For What Will We Be Thankful?
Truthfully, this year is going to test my flimsy grasp onto hope and optimism as I reflect on 2019 and consider all those things for which I should offer thanks.
Trolling the news hasn’t uplifted my spirits! We remain a country severely divided on so many issues of race, gender, political philosophy, definition of “high crime and misdemeanors,” gun control, violence, sanctity of life, school shootings, or even if there is any need for a place for religion in our scientifically enlightened culture.
I have watched old friends move away this year to enter a new and final chapter in their lives known as “retirement.” I am also quite aware that a chapter by that very name is not that far beyond my own experiential horizon.
Do I offer thanks for my clearly aging body and mind that remind me on a daily basis that I no longer possess skills I had long assumed would always be mine?
On the church front, so many dedicated members of established religious traditions (both clergy and lay members) live with delusion that good old days, large numbers and growth are just around the corner. We just need to have the proper magical formula work again – whatever that magical formula flavor of the month is!
And yet, next Thursday I will be ever so thankful to our God and Father. In spite of “clear and present danger” that the “thought police”, the “culture police”, the “dress police”, or the “food police” (among others) now dictate what is proper behavior (silly me – I always thought 10 commandments kind of said it all – didn’t need to go back to a list of 613!) I am grateful I live as a person who can think and speak and worship and write and relax as I choose.
I am grateful that while my health is experiencing the natural decline that must surely come (how damming to hear your doctor tell you that you are very fit “for someone as old as you” – Thanks), I am grateful for the health I have.
I am grateful for having been blessed with a loving companion for all these years, and perhaps someday I will write down (to be read after I am gone) all the nastiness and opposition two not-so-young persons experienced from both ecclesiastical and family sources who opposed that friendship and love. And you will know of the power of unselfish love that I have experienced.
I am grateful for every teen that has crossed my path in the various manifestations of youth ministry over the decades – not just because I have survived their rolling eyes, hateful stares, fuming exasperation, but also their concerns, their dreams, their fears, their understanding of God in their lives and even at times their secrets – simply because someone needed a judgement free zone in which to speak.
Of course I am grateful for a throw-away piece of garbage Border Collie which, as a puppy, was tossed to the streets, survived residence in a southern kill shelter, and made her way into New York and into my life. I am grateful for all the challenges and love experienced from her over the years. I am even grateful that some of you actually believe she really does talk to me.
I am grateful for the time I have been given. I hope there will be more, but if that is not to be, then let my final breaths be that of gratitude and not grumbling. I pray you all have a Happy Thanksgiving, and that you recognize all for which you ought to be grateful in spite of the darkness of our times.
Fr. Joe
Now You Can Stand Up and NOT Be Seen!
Last week I began the day listening to a grumbling Abby – “So what’s wrong with you?” (She barked) “Aren’t you disturbed by all the Christmas music, Christmas movies, Christmas ads and sales and specials, and Black Fridays etc etc? We’re hardly past Halloween and not even near Thanksgiving yet.” And Abby can be a loud insistent and at times utterly annoying border collie whose observations of the American scene can be both humorous and troublesome.
The day continued. I went down to our Diocesan Convention and caught up, in between sessions, talking with old friends, classmates, some former students and parishioners from all over this Episcopal Diocese of New York. And I listened to so much complaining: “Aren’t you disturbed by all the Christmas music, Christmas movies, Christmas ads and sales and specials, and Black Fridays etc etc? We’re hardly past Halloween and not even near Thanksgiving yet.” They didn’t bark. They just grumbled.
Maybe it’s me, but I often see things from a different perspective. Young (and now, often, not-so-young) adults who walk into a church hoping to have their child baptized or wanting to be married but who have had no connection to any church in years, if ever, are not to me, objects of contempt but rather souls to be won for Christ. To be welcomed home with love and respect and seen as the future of the Christian community, not to be ridiculed for their past.
So I am grateful for this now this seemingly almost complete victory of the forces of secularization in capturing the so called holiday (not Christmas) climate. And “why?” you might ask. Because this now gives us time to use and choices to make. I can purposely NOT participate in this shopping rushing about “holiday” madness and share with anyone (or no one) who listens why I choose to be different. You can bow and worship before the altar of Black Fridays and overindulgent parties. If that really makes you happy (and I am still searching for evidence of this), then good luck to you. Eat and drink to excess. Deal with church stuff only when you want “warm fuzziness.”
But that doesn’t work and it’s not real. Now I see our time, like the Christians of an era when such an identification led to not only scorn but possible arrest and execution, to stand up and stand apart. I choose to make the season of Advent (in terms of my reflections, my readings, and my personal prayer) a time of preparation and longing for what (and WHO) is truly important. I am not going to succumb to the enticements of so called “instant gratification.” I am going wish folks “the peace of God that passes all understanding” and not waste my time with the culture war of “Merry Christmas” vs. “Happy Holidays.” Let those who have taken the religious dimension from this season think they have won. I will witness and testify to the opposite and let the “evil of the present age” simply know what I stand for. No Abby, I am not grumbling at the season. I am just rolling up my symbolic sleeves and getting to work for Christ.
Fr. Joe
“No more war. War never again” (Pope Paul VI – 1964)
Every year, November 11 comes along with its unexpected day off from work (for some of us) and a special holiday sale (for those who shop) – and sadly the memory of the meaning of the day has all but slipped into history’s dustbin. There are no more survivors of “the great war’ among us any longer. There are no voices to retell the stories of the horrors that the 20thcentury’s first use of weapons of mass destruction. Only the “who-cares” history textbooks try to capture the mood of a world that was so bored that it felt it needed a good war to stir things any excuse would do: if not for the murder of one of those European royalty types, there would have been some other excuse. And we got to try out all news methods of killing: mustard gas, trench warfare, aerial bombing and strafing, the “dogfights” between opposing airmen and the finest use of 19th century thinking and planning sending young men into the teeth of 20th century technology.
It was the war to end all wars – except it wasn’t. And the killing continues in wars official and unofficial, declared or not. And now we must add to the mix the actions of terrorists (foreign and domestic) who kill for ideology rather than territory or national identity.
The point is that on the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month of 1918, that portion of humanity had declared that it had had enough of a bloodlust. Voices cried and (and documents were signed) that had said “enough.”
And yet war continues. I was a high school sophomore sitting on one of those monuments that used to be in center field at Yankee Stadium where I and (it seemed like) a zillion other high school students listened to a Pope who traveled to the U.N. and then celebrated an open air mass for peace (unheard of in that day) call for peace. That was 1964. How many wars since?
As a Christian and a priest – I try to live the words of Francis of Assisi: “Lord make me an instrument of your peace.” When I was 15, I thought I would change the world. Today I know I did not and cannot. But I will be an instrument of peace on whatever tiny little portion of this planet I reside for as many days as my Creator has determined I am to remain here. Armistice Day (as Nov. 11 was originally called) taught me that nations and governments and systems and philosophies or even church structures do not create peace. Only God does. And only when I listen. And only when I choose to live as a man of peace.
Fr. Joe