Last week, I attended mass in El Salvador and the priest was from the United States. He explained to the Salvadoran congregation that in the United States, we have entire day devoted to giving thanks and being grateful for all that we have. What a romantic idea – an entire nation, the only superpower nation, leader of the free world – giving thanks for what we have.
I don’t know how they imagined us – in our homes, at our kitchen or dining room tables giving thanks for the abundance that we have with…more abundance. Thanksgiving, our time to give heartfelt gratitude is celebrated with a splurge of money and resources and goods. AND FOOD. Food like no other day of the year. We eat until our ears are ringing.
This is how we give thanks?
If you look deeper, though, we do try to centralize what is important: togetherness, friendship, family. We try to express the love in our hearts by filling our bellies and slapping each other on the back after not seeing our families for weeks, months…sometimes years.
Despite this rather odd tradition of giving thanks through gluttony, I have really tried to think and act intentionally this year for this holiday. How do I give thanks? Is by cooking that big bird and adding butter to the stuffing? How do I show how grateful I am for my healthy son, how I am still overwhelmed by my uneventful pregnancy and glorious birth experience? How do I express my joy for my husband, our home, our communities, health, faith, and even landscaping?
How do you find love in the time of thanksgiving?
So much of thanksgiving is about other things than thanks. It’s time for Christmas and tradition, but is gratitude, real gratitude incorporated into our traditions? In how we celebrate thanksgiving, do we really give thanks?
The people of El Salvador expressed joy over our visit, exclaiming how blessed they were that we – regular folks with limited Spanish speaking skills – came to visit their homes. They give thanks over flimpsy steel roofs and standing in six inches of mud in the homes during the rainy season. When their sons end up in jail and their spouses are sick on a makeshift cot, they focus on what they do have and are thankful.
This week, I am trying to make use everything I have and take inventory of what I really don’t need, want, or use. For instance, I am beginning with my kitchen. Instead of piling up another cart of food for the upcoming week, I’m trying to cut my own potatoes and bake them instead of buying a bag of chips. Instead of store bought dip, I’m making my own eggplant based baba ganoush. Whatever clothes haven’t been worn in 2 years is being donated. On reasonably dry and cool days, I take my bike or walk instead of the car. Isaiah’s trunk of clothes is going to be raked through and anything that is tripled or quadrupled will be donated.
It’s not about restriction or limiting. It’s about knowing what you want, using it, rejoicing in its function, and letting go of the superfluous.
Love in the time of Thanksgiving is finally letting down my guard and walking over to my neighbor’s house to simply chat. Love in the time of Thanksgiving is letting Nick be uncomfortable in going to the grocery store and allowing myself time to just relax at home. Love in the time of Thanksgiving is going to a zumba class and letting loose. It means being more gentle and accepting that not every mind can be changed, not every heart can be touched, but those who I do come in contact with would never guess that from my actions.
I try to stir my deeper memories, old paintings in my mind of figures and friends long gone. Mrs. Young, my 5th grade teacher who told me I had “such great insights” which led me to write poetry. A woman who talked to me for two hours on a train in 2000 and engaged in such rich conversation that she invited me to visit her in her Washington home. Pamela Tanner Boll, an Oscar winning film director who spent over an hour with me on the phone encouraging me to continue with my writing through the demands and difficulty of new motherhood. The speech therapist I had when I was six years old, albeit she was the scariest person to me at the time, but helped me overcome my lisp. My first surgeon who steadily walked me through the reality of ovarian tumors at age 20.
Love in the time of Thanksgiving is not only celebrating what we have and who we are today, but also humbly remembering all who brought us to our present blessings.