So many conversations this past week have coalesced around the question of Thanksgiving: is your family coming? will you be alone? how weird is this pandemic Thanksgiving? how are you coping?
Yes…it’s weird.
My kids travel up from Brooklyn. One is here already, after having being tested. But, Covid has spiked again in New York City, and getting tested has become tricky to well nigh impossible. So, the other two may or may not make it up. We’ve never spent Thanksgiving apart, through the college years and the ongoing partnering up years. Not to have my children home for Thanksgiving is the unthinkable, but 2020 is the year of exactly that.
Walking through the pasture on Friday morning, I felt burdened by concerns: for our little family, for the Trumpian America, for the planet, for the… what does one think about when the world seems to be falling apart? What is worthy of considered thought?
Later that day, we were gifted with an extraordinary sunset. In the quiet of the moment, in the beauty and grace that is this farm I am lucky enough to live on, I thought to give praise and find joy. Both are fleeting, both are unexpected, and both come when least expected.
Praise What Comes by Jeanne Lohmann
Surprising as unplanned kisses, all you haven’t deservedof days and solitude, your body’s immoderate good healththat lets you work in many kinds of weather. Praisetalk with just about anyone. And quiet intervals, booksthat are your food and your hunger; nightfall and walksbefore sleep. Praising these for practice, perhapsyou will come at last to praise grief and the wrongsyou never intended. At the end there may be no answersand only a few very simple questions: did I love,finish my task in the world? Learn at least oneof the many names of God? At the intersections,the boundaries where one life began and anotherended, the jumping-off places between fear andpossibility, at the ragged edges of pain,
did I catch the smallest glimpse of the holy?