Hi Everyone,
Yes, it’s November and it’s Thanksgiving, a traditional time for gratitude and celebrating your harvest, whatever that may be—corn, barley, the completion of a 120,000 word manuscript of a new novel, or a 17.76% cumulative rate of return on your portfolio, even if NASDAQ and the S&P500 did better! The point, obviously, is it is a time for review, a time to consider those plans laid last New Year’s Eve and worked out in the early days of January; a moment to celebrate the giant steps or the gentle lurching forward, giving thanks for God’s grace in all circumstances, especially those least understood, like my professional investment team who failed to manage even a blip on the uptick scheme.
Recently I had one of those rare and perfect moments when life presented me with a different take on something that I thought I knew inside and out, a new paradigm perhaps: the concept of thanks, saying thank you. I think in his case, the visiting priest, might have just been recycling an old sermon as he was called in late, and breathlessly, robes flying, delivered his piece, knowing it had worked before and clearly did double takes to see if any of the congregation smiled, sat back, nodded ‘yes, very good’.
I nodded ‘very good’! The thesis of his sermon was that the whole point of mass was to give thanks. What hit me was the whole point of saying thank you to anyone for anything was to actually thank God ‘from whom all blessings flow’. Thank you as prayer was my takeaway. The odd thank you for the man holding the door, the tradesman who goes back and redoes the flashing, the person who for the millionth time takes a phone call and listens without judgment to a conundrum I am not remotely able to solve – they all go beyond their beneficent face value. These thank yous are a constant steady flow that remind me that, beyond the task at hand, the person before me is a world, inconceivable and mysterious, on which I am entirely dependent, and this, for better or worse, manifests itself in the everyday shenanigans of things.
Since childhood I have always been told that prayer should be ceaseless, something that I found utterly impossible (who can do that, especially with a life to live, calendar to maintain, bins to take out, etc.?). But this well-rehearsed and recycled sermon piqued my curiosity, gave me a little key to turn a lock, solve that whodunnit of praying ceaselessly. Saying thank you to the everyday person who has done some kindness, for the green-yellow leaves on the tree, for the story of elephants on Hannibal’s deadly trek explained over breakfast to me is easy and (yup!) ceaselessly never-ending.
While I have never counted my thank yous in one day, I am now changed. These thank yous are little intersections with the divine, and amazingly they are without end. Each time I am taken aback, I now stop; I am saying thank you to you and to the Thing which backs us all up, has a Hand on the tiller of life perhaps now and in the hereafter. What a pleasant tether—I am so grateful—thank you as a portal to the divine.
So yes, Happy Thanksgiving, happy thank you all around.
Love,
Marlene
Image by Midjourney