Thanksgiving Holiday: USA 2020

Our First Thanksgiving Gathering 1621

A three-day harvest in Plymouth was held in the fall. It would take some natives 2 days to walk to the festivities. This is the story told to me in our elementary school textbooks. It tells of natives and colonists sitting down peacefully for a meal of thankfulness for the season's bounty.

This event was followed by attacks, killings of hundreds of natives, and colonists as an expansion upon native lands increased. for decades and eventually, for centuries, killings, genocide, continued until land confined reservations were mandatory for the "first Americans".

Abraham Lincoln designated an official Thanksgiving Holiday in the fall of 1867. It was to celebrate the end of the civil war and all our nation could be thankful for.

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The native Americans in this country consider this holiday a "Memorial Day" for the many who fought and lost their lives to save their land and the freedom to live on their chosen ancestral lands. this sounds very much the same as our Memorial Day ceremonies all across the nation in May of each year.

How each family celebrates this holiday can be very similar, a turkey, pies, cranberries, and each culture with added treats. My family is chosen and is whoever lives nearby. 

Thanksgiving for apartment neighbors 2019 in Port Angeles.

Expanded this year to neighbors on the streets of my neighborhood 2020

"Doc and Bunny my partners in serving our neighbors"

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This year in a pandemic we are asked to not travel as 60% of citizens usually do to be with family. This year there was only a 20% reduction in travel. We will see the cost for these holiday reunions in the next month to come in total new cases and sadly the new family deaths.  Family members that will not attend the 2021 holiday. How can I see the blessings amongst my friends and families when gratefulness is so needed?

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" I wanna know, have you ever seen the rain. 

I wanna know have you ever seen the rain,

comin' down on a sunny day'?

This song by Creedence Clearwater "struck a chord" in me when I wanted to understand why this holiday was so different for me this year. It is easy to point to the pandemic as the source of so much disruption in our routines, traditions, or life as we demand and long for it to be. 

This world is now full of frequent storms, fires, and natural disasters. These disasters have come on the eve of this holiday too. Many have no home or family injured or dead. I see nature teaching me, as God wants me to understand and experience, I am not the master of my world. I am the caretaker of this world given to me to enjoy, not destroy. I am grateful for all those that continue to strive for climate change solutions. for the generations to come.

" Someone told me long ago

there's a calm before the storm

I know its been coming for some time

When it's over, so they say

It'll rain a sunny day

I know shining down like water"

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So, what has love got to do with it?

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Can I find a way to be grateful, thankful for the rain? Yes, when I know the sun will come up again and even in the sky, both can be seen together as the song says, "shining down like water". A grateful thankful heart comes from love. Can I find a way to be thankful this year, when the rain is relentlessly falling all around me.? I have lost one friend, 92 years old, Adele, to this virus. She was one of the first to die in a nursing home in my state of Washington. The sunny bright spot for me is that I was fortunate to meet her and know some of her stories. Hers was a long life.. Our common friend and my brother, Jerry, 88, is still going strong as ever though many miles from my home.

Jerry as a world traveler

I have the thought that this chaos may actually be a calm before the next storm in my country.. Hunger [ 1 in 6 families 60 million], political divisions, racial equality demands with unrest, and economic inequality [ more trillionaires being created] are festering like an old wound being scratched and reinjured and bleeding again.

Our President-Elect Biden in his Thanksgiving address to the nation on November 25th pleaded that we bring "LOVE" to the political arena... To come together and heal and see the opposition. in our partisan politics, and find our common values moving forward. This is a sunny day to hear these words from our newly yet contested winner. Now it will be each American to follow through [ or not ] and work for the changes needed to slow this coming, [, already here? ] STORM.

"Yesterday and days before

Sun is cold and rain is hard

I know been that way 

for all my time

til forever, on it goes."

In this country we live with motos of "The American Dream", " And Equal Justice for All,", " Right to Pursue Happiness", and religious freedom. These can be understood as a luminous sun on the horizon, yet felt by many here as only a dawning reality. The struggles many citizens have in the USA can be felt as a rainy drizzle or a torrent and flooding storm based on their skin color.. 

My faith has been my guiding light in these dark days.  Masks, distancing, and finding ways I can reach out to others at the same time. My blog is one of the ways technology has opened some "lockdown" doors. I look more to music and reading the WORD to find my way. Sometimes it feels like I can find the "light switch " for comfort from my fears and stressful moments. On the pages of the Bible, or in a songs' lyrics, or a smile on a stranger's face or a friendly text or the wagging of a pet's tail.....

Matthew  11:28-30

"Come to me all you who are weary and burdened, 

I will give you rest.

Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, For I am gentle and humble of heart, and

you will find rest in your souls.

For my yoke is easy and my burden light."

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The sun will be shining down through the rain.

and a rainbow may follow!