Category Archives: Thanksgiving

Hang It

Everything Is A Gift

You can’t see it, but my son’s gift is there – a map of Massachusetts with all the public libraries of the day inked in their locations. It’s beautifully done, with lovely script and depictions of each building; it’s a testament to architecture and the communal commitment to education and literacy a hundred or so years back. But it’s not framed yet, so all you can see of it is the very top of a cardboard cylinder and its plastic cap.

There’s a perfectly good reason why it’s still in the cylinder: I’ve moved three times in the last two years. I didn’t want it to get lost or broken, or put extra holes in walls I would soon leave. But I’ve settled into the new home and there are plenty of places to hang this thoughtful, beautiful gift. It’s time to take it into the local frame shop and get it on display. If I don’t tend to this soon, there’s a danger that it might never make it out of its container.

That glimpse of a lid and a cardboard tube is a reminder that a gift that remains unopened or unused isn’t really a gift I’ve accepted. It’s a missed opportunity to catch a glimpse of something beautiful, and to remember the person who gave it as an offering of love and generosity. I don’t want to look back on life and find it full of unopened cylinders; I want a life of gifts and their stories on full display. It’s high time I hang it up.

Low Maintenance

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Everything Is A Gift

We had only been in the renovated rectory a few weeks when this plant arrived – a welcome to your newly renovated space gift. It’s a Lotty Dotty Pink Hypoestes – cat safe and low maintenance. It matches my pink paper clips and push pins and makes me happy whenever I see it. It’s a thoughtful gift that adds beauty and life to my work space.

Animal friendly, low maintenance, not fussy, and bringing joy: it’s a good description of a human life well lived, too. And this plant as good an image of such a life as any other.

Twice Given

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He didn’t paint it for me; my son painted it for my mother-in-law, Carol. From Colin’s earliest days, Carol would sit with him at her breakfast table and watch the birds flying in and out of the back yard. It meant enough to Colin that he asked her for a backyard bird guide when he was seven. Because Carol noticed the beauty of birds, Colin did, too. For Christmas a few years before Carol died, Colin painted this tile for her.

Carol’s Gift

When Carol died, the painting came back – a reminder of love and time spent together appreciating the beauty and grace just outside the window. Such a simple, powerful, life-changing act, this giving. How immeasurably richer life is because of such things.

Celtic Knots

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The group wanted to explore Celtic spirituality for Advent in 2019. David Adam’s The Cry of the Deer: Meditations on the Hymn of Saint Patrick provided the words and Debbie Hill instruction in drawing Celtic knots. Debbie is an artist and calligrapher, and adventurous enough to take on teaching a dozen of us how to use pencils, dot paper, and ink to create intricate patterns. The first knot took more than an hour to make – a simple square. By the fourth or fifth try, I could manage a basic knot without needing to look at the directions.

The following weeks brought thoughtful conversation on Saint Patrick’s Breastplate and increasingly more intricate knots – candles frames, and diamonds embedded with crosses. Pulling out the dot paper, pencils, and pens turned into a prayerful act; seeing a pattern emerge from a collection of dots and circles, imperfectly formed but still pleasing, became a way of clearing my mind and opening my spirit to God.

I’m not known for my artistic ability, and I’ve never found drawing satisfying or relaxing. But Debbie’s encouragement and creativity opened up a new way to pray that’s lasted years beyond the original Advent study. I’m still surprised by it, and profoundly grateful.

Everything Is A Gift

Once, Now, and Yet To Be…

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The Christmas cactus has been blooming for a couple of weeks. I took this picture before I really saw that many of the flowers had gone by. Hoping for a more pleasing picture, I removed them.

That’s when I noticed all the buds. They are so much smaller than the faded blooms, and they don’t catch the eye like the flowers in their prime. But there they are, the sure signs of beauty to come. How extraordinary a gift to see the promise of what is yet to be, the presence of what is, and the vestiges of what once was, sitting on my bookcase.

There’s something here, gently nudging me to a truth usually overlooked. Appreciate the gift of what was and the beautiful vitality of what is. And, when the signs of what is yet to be appear, take notice and be grateful. Cactus wisdom at its best. If I apply it to my life as a whole, I just might get a glimpse of God’s presence in just about everyone and everything. I just might stop to honor the holy that Once was, rejoice in the Now, and love the Yet To Be.

Lord, grant me eyes to see.

Gifted

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I’ve had them for over twenty years – a gift from my friend, Elizabeth. She sent the set because she thought they would go well with my dining room chairs – and even though she hadn’t seen the chairs in months, the napkins matched them perfectly in both color and pattern.

What you can’t see when they are folded are the frayed edges and the faint stains. They have graced my holidays and my every day table weekly. Every time I put them out, I think of my friend and how her work has brought beauty into my home.

New things have a beauty that cannot be matched by the time-worn and use-worn. But old things have a history that come with them, cords connecting to years long gone and people no longer living next door or living.

Blessed be such ties that bind our hearts together.

This is one in a Thanksgiving series. Click Good Gifts above for more…

Sustained Thankfulness

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The big meal is twenty hours past, and the fridge is full of leftovers. Two of the eight around the yesterday’s table have already headed back to their homes and weekend activities. For the first time that I can remember, Advent isn’t starting three days after Thanksgiving – there’s a week in between that usually isn’t, and I’m at loose ends for its presence.

How to spend this week wisely? Instead of filling it up, I’ve decided to keep it open – keep the Advent activities at bay for the week and enjoy the time to reflect on what I’m most thankful for these days. It’s nothing grand, just the usual things. That’s okay; I suspect the same is true for most everyone else, too…

I hope your week is peaceful, your gratitude deep, and your life the richer for both.

Thanksgiving Sage

Going Around In Elipses

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Plymouth Sunrise, by Donna Eby

In the 4th century BCE, the Pythagoreans proposed a radical idea: the Earth was not stationary, but moving. In the 3rd century BCE, Aristarchus of Samos proposed a heliocentric model of the solar system: the sun as the center point, and the Earth moving around it in circles.

Ptolemy proposed a geocentric model, and he worked out the math to accompany it. It was a complex system, but was the predominant one for hundreds of years. This was the model incorporated into theology – humanity as the focus of all creation, living on the unmoving center of the entire creation.

Fast forward to the 1500’s, and Renaissance mathematician Nicolaus Copernicus proposes the Heliocentric Model once again. Then come Kepler and Galileo. Based on what is mathematically simpler and more elegant, Kepler proposes elliptical orbits rather than circular ones; Galileo comes along with supporting evidence seen through his telescope. In spite of theological objections and suppression, the geocentric model is eventually rejected. In spite of preconceived notions, observational data and advanced mathematics displace Earth from the center of all things to its current position: orbiter around a sun, and one planet among billions.

Humanity no longer inhabits the immovable center of creation, and the universe does not revolve around humanity’s home. Such displacement isn’t the end of the world, it’s the beginning of a new perspective on a much larger reality – one that incorporates our particular species on our small planet without pretending it’s the only reason the entire cosmos came into being. As a species, it’s similar to the shift that children have when they realize that their parents had lives before and beyond their own.

What a wonderful, big idea: that the universe is about more than just one particular part, and that its mystery and majesty are not limited to human knowledge or imagination. God’s creation is not governed by human preference for circles rather than ellipses, but governed by its own internal structure.

I think going around in ellipses rather than living on an immovable focal point is endlessly interesting. I love the fact that I am a part of something so big, something that has made room for me and every other life form. Just because the world doesn’t revolve around any one of us doesn’t mean we aren’t valuable – it just means everyone else is valuable, too.

Big Idea: Relativity

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Einstein’s theory of general relativity didn’t mean that everything is relative – that nothing is sure, or that there’s no real way to value one thing over another. Einstein’s theory is that everything is connected, Related not relative. The Butterfly Effect and John Donne’s poem are both pointing to the same truth as Einstein’s theory: that everything is related to everything else.

One particular negative example comes to mind for me. Our friend Ben Suddard’s oyster beds were damaged by the run-off of all the chemical fertilizers used in towns twenty miles upstream from the bay. The connection wasn’t obvious, but it was real and powerful.

There are many examples on the positive side as well. But one of the most profound for me: nothing in creation is unrelated to the Creator. Perhaps that’s why one of the names for Jesus is God-With-Us…

The Big Idea

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It’s the run-up to Thanksgiving, and a good time to think about ideas and people who have changed the world in amazing ways – philosophers, holy ones, scientists, artists of all kinds, healers, and keepers of our world.

For the next few weeks, I’m taking a page from Kobi Yamada’s and Mae Besom’s book, What Do You Do With An Idea? (Seattle, Washington: Compendium, 2013). I’m going to give it some thought, be open to new directions and actions, and see where it all goes.

You are more than welcome to join me…