The Power of the Purse | Grateful to be Old
Friends,
I hope you have had a lovely Thanksgiving feast. Or a simple, delicious meal. I am with some of my family, and many good friends this holiday weekend. I spent wonderful time with my nephew before he went elsewhere for the actual feast day, and then time with my brother and niece.
We play strategy games together (Wingspan, Agricola, Hardback, Scrabble, Tiny Towns) and this year we played "Liz Loses". I didn't even come in second place! It was delightful.
I hope you are joining me on the Mass Blackout campaign this Friday through Monday. I gave up black Friday shopping decades ago, but am committing to only buying local through the long weekend.
-Liz
Thankfulness
Thankfulness is so important to staying healthy. It is especially important when things are going badly. I've learned almost all I know about thankfulness from people who are homeless or at risk of homelessness. They exhibited the art of seeing what is beautiful, powerful, and right in the face of hopelessness.
As such, thankfulness is directly connected to hope. Hope is not a thing with feathers, in my mind, but rather trusting that good will win despite all evidence to the contrary. And it is impossible to be hopeful if you do not make the effort to see the beauty in the frost, the joy in music, the successes, however rare, that are around us.
This form of thankfulness is well-suited to the ways we feel oppressed, put down, not enough, and the ways we are defeated. In the Jamestown settlement in 1610 the thanksgiving followed a winter when almost everyone starved to death. The thanksgiving of the pilgrims, and the official proclamation after the civil war were similarly a response to impossibly horrible times. I think of Psalm 23, the sense of comfort and bounty following the valley of the shadow of death.
But it leads me to wondering what Thanksgiving is for those of us whose lives are not too bad. For the areas where we have privilege. For those of us who are not worried where our next meal will come from, or whether ICE is searching us out, or who have paid time off and money to travel to see our families. Our healthy, loving, welcoming families.
What do we do with Thanksgiving when we have all that we need?
Just recently I heard the Rev. Dr. Sathianathan (Sathi) Clarke preach at a worship service honoring 60 years of ordination of my beloved Episcopal Divinity School professor the Rev. Dr. Christopher Duraisingh. They are both graduates of The United Theological College in Bangalore, Kerala, India, where I traveled as part of my seminary experience.
Sathi Clarke laid out the problem in his sermon: "How can we be in thanksgiving when we are crushing the poor and oppressed?" It was a jolting topic for a celebratory gathering, but one that matches Dr. Duraisingh's life's work. A mission that emphasizes givers as different from receivers leads to thankfulness from those with little and a sense of independent power among those with excess.
Instead we all must strive to find, and join, God's work in the world. God's work is with those who are poor, who are strangers, who are oppressed. Our aim is to be in solidarity with those in need. And solidarity presumes deference to those who become experts through their lived experience.
Our world is not one where the poor are thankful and those with plenty are more thankful, indeed it is the one who has been saved from loss, despair, or death who is most able to appreciate the littlest things.
We who have more improve our thankfulness by adding confession and generosity to our spiritual disciplines. We confess our role in adding to the inequality of the world and we give generously. We promise to do better. We find ways to give more. This becomes part of our expression of thanks.
Advent is almost upon us, a time of waiting for salvation. It is important that we avoid partitioning November to thankfulness and December to waiting, but rather approach both these seasons with attention to the world made better. As congregations, and as individuals, spend this time in reflection, and in action, to attend to the ways the world is crushing our neighbors. Through confession, through generosity, through thankfulness we aim to work with God to work toward God's vision of abundance for all.
Sometimes mainline and progressive congregations lay low on the confession part of our faith? How does this fit into your church experience? Reply to this email to let me know what is going on.
Heather Cox Richardson, an American history professor at Boston College, offers a historical viewpoint on the value of the power of the purse.
The comic strip XKCD is often about math and science, but this one is a particularly poignant thank you offered in response to surviving cancer.
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