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Abstract

d slow us down. Our first child was on the way.Before the weekend was out we were sitting in a hospital emergency room. Listening to a somber-faced young doctor explain my wife’s shortness of breath wasn’t being caused by her pregnancy. There was a large mass crowding the space that was supposed to be occupied by her lungs.Years later we would still think of that Thanksgiving as a sort of continental divide in our lives. Events flowed free and easy in one direction before. And in a different direction ever after.The holiday season and following year became a labyrinth of radiation therapy and chemotherapy for mother and baby to navigate. One memory is etched in my soul. My wife in bed. Hardly breathing. A program of hauntingly beautiful Christmas music by the Choir of King’s College on the radio. It felt like Heaven was coming for us that dark December evening.And then it didn’t. The worst danger passed. Our young family moved on to all that would come next.Thanksgiving itself came as a part of our great national before-and-after event. Abraham Lincoln declared the first national Thanksgiving Holiday in the darkest hours of the Civil War, to lift the spirits of a nation besieged by death. The point was to look ahead to the new freedom made possible by the sacrifice that, at the moment, felt endless.Now we’re once again besieged by fear and death. “Happy Super Weird Thanksgiving,” my boss emailed to our working-from-home creative department on the eve of the long holiday weekend. But Thanksgiving has been here before. It’s a holiday built to help us

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through the hard times and the weird ones.The weather in Minnesota was kind to me this Thanksgiving. At 34 degrees, the day was just mild enough that my daughter and her husband could safely join us in the backyard for the classic feast. At least, if we ate quick and kept the fire going in the firepit.Not the big Thanksgiving we would have liked, with the good china out and the leaf put in the dining room table. We were thankful for the scrap of togetherness we were able to put together.Up and down the block other families were doing the same. The country is supposed to be suffering from pandemic fatigue, but that’s not what I saw in the small family groups gathered around their fire pits in driveways and back yards. Weariness certainly, in the face of an unrelenting virus. But also the gritty sort of gratitude that comes from cobbling together at least the bones of a celebration in uncertain times.I dislike the notion of “pandemic fatigue” because the most dangerous thing our leaders can do right now underestimates the ability of our people to share the sacrifices needed to get us through this. Just look at how much our healthcare workers are giving of themselves in overwhelmed hospital wards.Lincoln understood that. When the darkness seems interminable, remind people there is light to be found in thinking about gratitude.Harvest festivals are cyclical. The Earth has given up her bounty. The stalks are dry and barren. But the seeds are preserved for the time when it all begins afresh. That’s the enduring wisdom of Thanksgiving.</article></body>

Older & Wiser on Thanksgiving.

We all reach a point in life where childhood ends. Kaput. Finito.

I’m not talking about the often-lamented winning of innocence. More the hard realization that life has stopped being carefree. Maybe it never was.

The Apostle Paul mentions this in his famous I Corinthians passage about love. “When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child.” He’s getting to his point about love, but he takes the time to first mention that understanding the important things means putting the childish ones behind you.

For some, this moment comes, tragically, while they’re very young. Think back to the news accounts of children torn from their parents at the southern U.S. border these past four years.

If you’re living the privileged life the moment you say goodbye to childhood may not come until you’ve sailed well into adulthood.

For me, it was Thanksgiving, 1983.

On the eve of the long holiday weekend, my wife and I joined some friends to see the new movie A Christmas Story. We were young and sparkling and nothing could slow us down. Our first child was on the way.

Before the weekend was out we were sitting in a hospital emergency room. Listening to a somber-faced young doctor explain my wife’s shortness of breath wasn’t being caused by her pregnancy. There was a large mass crowding the space that was supposed to be occupied by her lungs.

Years later we would still think of that Thanksgiving as a sort of continental divide in our lives. Events flowed free and easy in one direction before. And in a different direction ever after.

The holiday season and following year became a labyrinth of radiation therapy and chemotherapy for mother and baby to navigate. One memory is etched in my soul. My wife in bed. Hardly breathing. A program of hauntingly beautiful Christmas music by the Choir of King’s College on the radio. It felt like Heaven was coming for us that dark December evening.

And then it didn’t. The worst danger passed. Our young family moved on to all that would come next.

Thanksgiving itself came as a part of our great national before-and-after event. Abraham Lincoln declared the first national Thanksgiving Holiday in the darkest hours of the Civil War, to lift the spirits of a nation besieged by death. The point was to look ahead to the new freedom made possible by the sacrifice that, at the moment, felt endless.

Now we’re once again besieged by fear and death. “Happy Super Weird Thanksgiving,” my boss emailed to our working-from-home creative department on the eve of the long holiday weekend. But Thanksgiving has been here before. It’s a holiday built to help us through the hard times and the weird ones.

The weather in Minnesota was kind to me this Thanksgiving. At 34 degrees, the day was just mild enough that my daughter and her husband could safely join us in the backyard for the classic feast. At least, if we ate quick and kept the fire going in the firepit.

Not the big Thanksgiving we would have liked, with the good china out and the leaf put in the dining room table. We were thankful for the scrap of togetherness we were able to put together.

Up and down the block other families were doing the same. The country is supposed to be suffering from pandemic fatigue, but that’s not what I saw in the small family groups gathered around their fire pits in driveways and back yards. Weariness certainly, in the face of an unrelenting virus. But also the gritty sort of gratitude that comes from cobbling together at least the bones of a celebration in uncertain times.

I dislike the notion of “pandemic fatigue” because the most dangerous thing our leaders can do right now underestimates the ability of our people to share the sacrifices needed to get us through this. Just look at how much our healthcare workers are giving of themselves in overwhelmed hospital wards.

Lincoln understood that. When the darkness seems interminable, remind people there is light to be found in thinking about gratitude.

Harvest festivals are cyclical. The Earth has given up her bounty. The stalks are dry and barren. But the seeds are preserved for the time when it all begins afresh. That’s the enduring wisdom of Thanksgiving.