Faith,
Family & Community
In church on Sunday, I joked that if you have been in a store recently, you might have noticed that we went directly from Halloween to Christmas. It feels as if Thanksgiving is getting the shaft. That seems to happen every year. Consumerism drives this. And I understand that since COVID many folks have wanted to be in the Christmas spirit. I don’t begrudge anyone this feeling. As a minister, I’m kind of fond of the Christmas spirit. We can have both gratitude and the Christmas spirit in one moment, though. I also think we need to safeguard the holiday of Thanksgiving, the idea of giving thanks. Gratitude and thankfulness need to be part of our every day, not just the 4th Thursday of November.
Let’s face it. For many of us, there seems to be little to be thankful for. Especially this year. For many good reasons.
And yet, we must not let the politicians and wars and violence and scarcity and arguments overtake and overwhelm our gratitude. Especially this year.
Anne Lamott has a book called Help Thanks Wow. In it she writes, “Thanks is the short form of the original prayer I used to say in gratitude for any unexpected grace in my life, “thankyouthankyouthankyou!” As I grew spiritually, the prayer became more formal, Thank you. And now from the wrinkly peaks of maturity, it is simply Thanks… It is easy to thank God for life when things are going well.
But life is much bigger than we give it credit for, and much of the time it’s harder than we would like. It’s a package deal, though. Sometimes our mouths sag open with exhaustion, and our souls and minds do, too, with defeat, and that saggy opening is what we needed all along. Any opening leads to the chance of flow, which sometimes is the best we can hope for, and a minor miracle at that, open and fascinated, instead of tense and scared and shut down.
God, thank you.”
William White, famed storyteller and former minister, tells about a time when a man came to his office seeking help. He was an alcoholic in need of rehab and help for his wife and children. After the man and his family were settled, White called an elderly gentleman in his church.
Rex and some of his AA buddies assisted the man through his rehab. One day in White’s office Rex asked if the man had followed up with him or called to say thank you.
White responded that he hadn’t, but that it wasn’t necessary. He was a minister and didn’t need to be thanked. Rex called the man and yelled at him for not following up, for not saying thank you. White asked why he did that and Rex replied, “I’m about to give up on you ministers. You think I wanted him to thank you in order to make you feel good? You don’t need the thanks, but the man needs to say it. He can’t live without thanksgiving. Part of his drinking problem is that he doesn’t know how to be grateful. He has a social illness and a part of the cure is gratitude.”
Friend and colleague Scott Colglazier in his book Circling the Divine writes, “I think every one of us would like to be a bit happier. And I think every one of us would like to have a good Thanksgiving. Happy. Healthy. Experiencing life with the deepest of satisfaction. All of us would like that. But the ones who finally find it are the ones who learn how to open their lives to it and the ones who learn how to give thanks for it. As strange as it may sound, we have to give thanks before we can find the wholeness that will make us thankful. Because if we wait until everything in life is lined up perfectly, we will never be thankful, and we will never be whole, and we will never be happy.”
We can’t live without thanksgiving. Thanksgiving and gratitude will not come to us in a moment. Or on a special day. Thankfulness is a practice, a daily practice, a necessary daily practice. To have a happier, more peace-filled celebration this year (even in the midst of harder times) begin to practice Thanksgiving now. Peace friends.
Kelly Ingersoll, Minister
Kelly Ingersoll is the Pastor of First Christian Church of Macomb and resides in Macomb with his wife Anne.
