Thanksgiving: our least corrupted holiday. And yet it, too, is distorted and corrupted by a certain hype that we allow Hallmark, grocery stores, florists, and others to commit. Thanksgiving requires nothing but being thankful. It requires no football games, no turkey, no family, no root vegetables being braised, no pumpkins and no big meal, no burping and having leftovers for days. It only requires a grateful heart that owns the contingency of the very breast within which it beats. Thanksgiving is not increased or augmented by comparisons (Im so much luckier and better off than they are who have no food and no friends, for example). Thanksgiving is no different essentially from the short little darts of love that the 14th century author of the Cloud of Unknowing commends be aimed in the direction of the Great Lover of the Universe who attracts all being to the Lovers own Self, which is pure Being. Thanksgiving is not an attitude nor a condition so much as it is a decision, an intentional yielding of oneself to ones own utter disposability. To give thanks is to acknowledge that it is not by might, nor by power, nor by ones own ingenuity that one has anything, including ones own breath. We are creatures within a universe of connectivity. Whether we own it or not, we are fragile vessels of life that can fall with the slightest touch, most of the time trying our best to deny our fragility with much bravado about security and responsibility. The very act of writing these words is a miracle. The very fact that I am alive takes my breath away. All I can do is to hush, and bow in silence as the storied cosmos quietly moves on.
Posted on: Wed, 26 Nov 2014 23:33:34 +0000
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