November 24, 2009
The week of Thanksgiving, and our anxiety-ridden consumer culture has rushed onward, draping the pumpkins in greens and holly, and imposing upon the November ear the sound of jived-up “Hark the Herald Angels Sing” as one goes to pick up bird seed at the local store catering to farmer’s needs. “It’s going to be a long season for you, isn’t it?” I comment to the woman at the checkout as the music moves on to “Silent Night, Holy Night”, country-western style and she sighs and says, “It won’t even stop at Christmas. . . they tell us we gotta keep it up until January the first”. So I return to the car, thankful that my life does not require eight hours a day of hearing Christmas music in the background of the sounds of general commerce. By now the sound tracks have taken the carols of our youth and rendered them into thousands of hours of tortured settings in hopes of something “new” that will grasp the heart and open the pocketbook in generous expressions of gifting. The sorry thing is that even before the words, “Happy Thanksgiving!” pass one’s lips, there are likely people saying, “If I never hear ‘Joy to the World’ again, it won’t be too soon”.
This morning I lost it. Yesterday afternoon we were off on a tiny adventure to Omaha to a toy store in order to find some gifts for the twins’ upcoming birthday, and we concluded by eating our supper out before returning home. In the process, I lost track of the careful routine of medications, and when I awakened today, I felt pain and misery throughout my body. It was too much, and I began to cry uncontrollably. Dear Charles held me and gave me comfort until the storm passed, and Alphie lay quietly against my leg. I think that each day I deal with the dichotomy of “This is who I am” and “This is who I would like to be”, and there is an incremental buildup of sorrow until one day it becomes too much and suddenly, there you are. Now all is calm again and life goes on.
Sanctuary is just coming out of an unnatural silence as this week ends the rifle hunting of deer. The creatures knew, and even the birds remained very still, trying not to draw attention to themselves. Deer would freeze down in the hollows of the wetlands, waiting for Alphie and me to pass by, and hoping that we were not intent on killing them; we pretended that we did not know they were there. The weather is finally permitting the last fields of corn to be harvested, and there will be genuine thanksgiving for this gift. When I was a little girl, in the small white church on a hill in Iowa we always sang “Come, Ye Thankful People, Come” on Thanksgiving day morning and as a child of the farm, the hymn was my favorite. We would go home to feast on that day, and where we lived, the winter snows usually came soon after, but the corncrib was full, the granaries held plenty of food for the animals and we were snugged in and ready.
“Come, ye thankful people, come; raise the song of harvest home. All is safely gathered in ‘ere the winter storms begin. God, our maker doth provide for our wants to be supplied. Come to God’s own temple, come, Raise the song of harvest home.”
Today we are still a “thankful people” because of all the blessings we have been given, we are getting at the moment, and will continue to receive in the coming days. Have a Blessed Thanksgiving!