Refugees from the Old World come to the New. They have been persecuted. They have forged a brave escape. Children. Women. Men. Months on the winter sea. The North Atlantic. They rejoice, yet are full of dread. Glad to have solid ground beneath their feet, they do not know what is ahead.
They want to make a new way. Religious freedom. The people reign. Yet the shadow of the old way has stained them deeply. They cannot take it off like a shirt. They carry what they have left behind with them; fear and suspicion. They are surrounded by strange people, strange language, strange customs. The land is foreign to them. What is beyond the mountain?
This is the act of courage we remember at Thanksgiving – grateful survivors abandoned in a hostile land. No way home.
And yet our Thanksgiving feasts cast a shadow. Like the dark side of the moon, there is a side of the celebration which we can’t see, don’t want to see, choose not to see. If we don’t pay attention to the shadow, maybe it will go away. NEWSFLASH: It Won’t!!!
The systematic damage done to native inhabitants, to Africans brutalized in the slave trade, to the continental landscape, to the biosphere, to air, soil, and water.
And what does the habit of blindness do to us as a people? As individuals? Is it too late to learn the art of reciprocity, to practice give and take with each other, with the land?
As we enjoy our Thanksgiving dinners gathered with family and friends, listing the things for which we are grateful, let us be grateful as well that we can learn to make better choices, that more is not always best, that we can make sacrifices for the common good. Every success creates the next failure. Success is a kind of failure if it neglects to pay attention to contrary truth.
We lose by conquering. (That is a contrary truth.)
Thanksgiving/2015