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Holy Week resources and reflections

Thanksgiving thoughts from PC(USA) stated clerk

LOUISVILLE — Maybe we should skip Thanksgiving this year.

After all, it has been a rough fall. Our investment crops have been devastated. Our long election campaign has left us an angry divide. We still have sons and daughters in harm’s way. The number of people who are homeless, sick, and hungry grows daily.

Perhaps a look back at the roots and the two sets of personalities that make up our Thanksgiving tradition would be helpful at this point.

The pilgrims and the Native Americans known as the Pakanokets, who gathered together in the fall of 1621, make up the first set of personalities.
 Nathaniel Philbrick has written an excellent account of the pilgrim experience in his book Mayflower. He tells the story of the first fall harvest, with the ready availability of wild game (including turkeys) and the five freshly killed deer that the Pakanokets brought to the event.

They did not have a long table with a white tablecloth in the dining room; rather, theirs was a giant outdoor picnic where the dinner guests outnumbered the continent guests by about two to one.

The second personality to our Thanksgiving tradition is Abraham Lincoln, who issued the Thanksgiving Day proclamation in 1863.

Both those around in 1621 and in 1863 had little reason to give thanks back then. The little pilgrim band did not have a family among them who had not suffered loss during that first year. Fewer than half of those who landed on Plymouth Rock were still alive. And Lincoln’s proclamation came during the Civil War. The nation was a country of widows and grieving parents. The bloodiest war in its history had destroyed families and fields.

Perhaps their acts of thanksgiving were a reflection of the great Hebrews 11:1 definition of faith — the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.

Thanksgiving this year may be one of those times when we will be reminded that the things not visible to the human eye are what bring us the greatest joy and peace.

 

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