East Meadow Interfaith Thanksgiving Homily: Make Every Day Thanksgiving

A version of this sermon was delivered at the 2017 East Meadow Interfaith Thanksgiving Service on November 19, 2017 at the East Meadow United Methodist Church.

Good evening friends.  The last time I was honored with this opportunity to preach to our community was in 2013 and I had just been installed as the Rabbi at Temple Emanu-El.  You may recall that was the year that Chanukah and Thanksgiving coincided.  Let me thank Pastor Johnson-Agu for allowing me the honor of speaking this evening, as well as Rabbi Cohen-Rosenberg for her work organizing this evening’s service and the work she does to coordinate our Interfaith Council all year.  And thank you all for being with us as well.  This is a service to which I know so many, including myself, look forward every year.

This year, I must admit, however, is more than a little bittersweet for me and my community.  As you may have read in the Herald or heard in the supermarket, this coming July, Temple Emanu-El is merging into Temple B’nai Torah in Wantagh.  We fully anticipate that we will continue to be a part of the East Meadow Interfaith Council, as so many of our members will still be residents of East Meadow, and we look forward to being with you for this service in years to come, but our congregation will no longer have an East Meadow address.  It is sad; but it is the right decision for our congregation.

And so, before I do anything else, I offer my sincerest thanks to the East Meadow Faith Community on behalf of our congregation and our congregants.  We have been a part of the fabric of this community for 68 years and it is truly sad that we must go.  For the last three generations, we have called East Meadow our home.  This coming July, we will move.  It is less than 5 miles away from our current address, but it is also a world away, even if it is just over the border into Wantagh.  The specific reasons for our decision are best left explained at another opportunity.  So in the spirit of Thanksgiving, I thank you and your communities for the many decades of support, community, and collegiality.

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Each year "we gather together to ask the Lord’s blessing" and to give thanks.  And Thanksgiving is an occasion on which we publicly dedicate ourselves to gratitude, both personally and communally.  But it sometimes seems like we have decided that Thanksgiving is the only day of the year that we offer our thanks in such a public manner.  Thanksgiving is a once a year event, like New Year’s or a Birthday.  But unlike those events, Thanksgiving ought not be the only time that we practice gratitude and thankfulness in this manner.  Thanksgiving should be the day on which we model all other days of the year: not an exception, but the rule.  

Jewish tradition has a lot to teach us about thankfulness and what it means to have gratitude.  How can we can begin to work toward a commitment to thankfulness?  By committing to make every day a day of Thanksgiving!

To start, the term for gratitude in Hebrew is Hakarat HaTov, which literally translates to “recognition of the good.”  Embedded in our understanding of being thankful is a sense that there is a lot of good in the world, but we have to do the work to recognize it.  We have to take the time to think about that which is good in our lives, especially all that we might take for granted.  This act of recognizing the good grants us an opportunity to mimic the divine.  We learn in the first chapter of Genesis that as God creates the world, God makes a point on each day to recognize the good.

Our nature as humans, however, means that it’s often easier to complain about the difficulties we face.  Some of this is because we can all relate.  We all know what it means to be stuck in traffic or delayed in an endless security line.  We get what it means to be disappointed.  Negative feelings come on fast and seek commonality with others.

When we experience something good, we may understand that feeling to be quite personal, requiring a deeper connection or relationship with another in order to share it.  Recognizing the bad is easy; and our modern lives have been built on valuing the easier, faster, and more convenient.  We commiserate easily with others about the bad.  How many times have you been in a line and someone shares their frustration with how long the line is or how slowly it’s moving? 

Recognizing the good, on the other hand, asks that we focus on how wonderful it is that we’re in line about to see a show, or get on a plane to travel to see a loved one or see a place we’ve always wanted to visit. Recognizing the good means that we ought to focus on the gifts we are given.  It is a matter of faith to recognize the good.  It requires that we pause to let in the good and let out the gratitude.  

Recognizing the good takes time.  At least we think it does.  But, truthfully, it takes no more time than focusing on the negative.  It’s about our mindset.  Are we programmed to seek out the good and give thanks or are we programmed to seek out and highlight the negative?  Have we programmed ourselves to do one over the other?  We can retrain our minds to recognize the good simply by doing so over and over again.  Gratitude begets happiness, which begets more gratitude.

Let us retrain ourselves to see the good, recognize it and be grateful for it.  Let us not allow Thanksgiving to be the once a year holiday where we force ourselves to see the good!  Let the good that we see in our lives every day be called out and heralded.  This is perhaps what Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, the former Chief Rabbi of the United Kingdom means when he describes thankfulness as "a transformative act of faith."[1]  We are transformed by seeking out the good!

And this is now where I’ll preach to the choir, because people of faith often have more ability to recognize the good and show gratitude because our faiths allow us a conduit through which we can channel our gratitude. Whatever concept of the divine we may hold in our hearts and souls, it is a shared trait that we show our thanks and offer prayers of thanksgiving to the Source of Creation.

Judaism, as all faiths, has many prayers of thanksgiving and though they are particular to our worship, they contain many universal truths about what it means to be thankful and show gratitude for the good we recognize in our lives.

One blessing of thanksgiving is found in all three of the Jewish daily prayer services, just before a blessing for peace.[2]  Traditionally, this blessing is first said independently as a part of a litany of many blessings. These blessings are then repeated by a prayer leader when one is present.  The prayer leader has the authority to recite all the blessings of this litany on behalf of the community, and all we have to do is agree with an Amen.  There is one exception.  When the repetition of the blessing of thanksgiving is offered by the leader, each member of the congregation recites it on their own as well.  Tradition explains that this is because no one may offer thanks on our behalf.[3] 

The universal truth of this tradition is that we have to do it ourselves.  We are not supposed to send anyone to be thankful on our behalf.  True thankfulness cannot be outsourced, not even to a prayer leader.  We have to recognize the good in our own lives and show our own gratitude and our own appreciation.  No one can do it for us.

This blessing of Thanksgiving begins in scripture.  In the Torah, the Books of Moses, God commands a series of sacrifices, among them, the Thanksgiving offering.  For the last 2000 or so years, prayers have taken the place of sacrifices in Jewish worship, which is why we have that blessing of Thanksgiving.  The ancient rabbis[4] teach us that in the messianic age, all the sacrifices and prayers will be cancelled, with one exception: the Thanksgiving.  Jewish belief is that the messianic age will be a time when no one will have any needs and the universe will be complete and at peace.  We won’t need to ask for anything.  We won’t need to recognize God’s greatness.  The only thing that we will need to do is give thanks.  The messianic age will be an age of pure thankfulness. 

The universal lesson here is that thankfulness never goes out of style and will never not be necessary.  If we will have all our needs met in the messianic age, and yet we will still need to offer thanks, how much more important is our gratitude now for the good things we do have in our lives? 

Gratitude, thankfulness, recognizing the good.  These are eternal requirements.  Not even the messiah undoes their necessity in the world!  Our gratitude is always necessary.  And it is essential that it always be personally given.  If we remember these lessons, we can begin to work to make every day a day of Thanksgiving, rather than just the 4^th Thursday in November.

Rav Kook, the first chief rabbi of Israel once taught[5], and I’m paraphrasing here, that without gratitude and recognizing the good, our spirits lose their sparkle and their shine.  By recognizing the good, we keep that sparkle in our soul, we keep the light of God in our beings, and we remain able to be bearers of that light.  Our souls shine brightly when we are grateful.  Our spirits dazzle as they emit the divine light.

May we all work to let our spirits shine in this next year and in the days ahead.  May we learn to recognize the good, and through that good offer our gratitude to God.  In doing so we allow God’s light to break forth like the dawn.  In doing so we taste the messianic age in our own day.  In doing so we can make every day a day of Thanksgiving.

May we all have a blessed and safe holiday.

Thank you.

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[1] Note on Modeh Ani, Sacks Koren Siddur, p. 5

[2] Referring to Modim

[3] Rabbi Doug Zelden

[4] Vayikra Rabbah 9:7

[5] For the Perplexed of the Generation 4:9

Erev Rosh HaShanah Sermon: Toward Inter-Religious Dialogue

A version of this sermon was delivered on Erev Rosh HaShanah 5776 at Temple Emanu-El of East Meadow. 

       “Aren’t we a nice family?”  A man I had the pleasure of meeting while marching in South Carolina, a man named Middle Passage, asked this simple, jocular, yet profound, question at dinner the evening after the Justice March in South Carolina.  Middle Passage took a bus 1300 miles from Colorado to Selma to march for Justice, intending to march the entire distance to Washington, DC.  Middle Passage made it his job to carry the American flag at the front of the marchers day after day.  Middle Passage served in the Navy and had 5 open-heart surgeries in the decades before he joined the march in honor of his brother.  Yesterday, I learned that Middle Passage took ill while marching in Virginia and could not be revived.  At mile 922.  The culmination of that march is this week in Washington, DC, and MP, as he was often called, will not see it.  I marched alongside him at the front while carrying the Torah.  We didn’t speak much during the day, we focused on the marching, but I gained the strength to continue marching just by being next to him and his unwavering devotion.  I didn’t want to stop while I was next to him.  I hope that I was able to do provide at least a little bit of that in reciprocity.

        This question he asked at dinner, “Aren’t we a nice family?” wasn’t just out of the blue.  After having marched over 13 miles in high temperatures and humidity, we were all tired, and hungry.  Middle Passage was seated alongside a few of the local NAACP marchers, and my colleague and friend, Rabbi Lauren Cohn, as well as a few other rabbis.  I noticed that there was only one space left at their table, but I asked if I could pull up a table to join them, so that I could make room for my niece, but also because after the long, hot day of marching alongside everyone, I didn’t want us to all be seated at separate tables.  I added a table, and more joined us.  So there we were, all seated together, and Middle passage asked this question: “Aren’t we a nice family?!”  And we did feel like family.  Especially over dessert: homemade vanilla and orange pound cakes, which had been lovingly donated and served by a group of local NAACP ladies who came by just to bring homemade cake.  They were delicious.

         It was a different question from Middle Passage that led us toward an interesting and important conversation.  Middle Passage, having marched with Reform Rabbis for 25 days at this point, asked our day’s group of Reform Rabbis if our liberalism with Jewish Law and tradition wasn’t just diluting Judaism.  What a question.  That’s a question that really requires an all-day answer.  And, it’s a question that is important to have an answer for, especially if you’re a Reform Rabbi.  So we talked, explaining that we find a sense of sacredness in our decisions and in the process of making those decisions; and that we value Jewish Law, but don’t give it absolute authority over our entire lives and beings.  And we listened, about what they understood about Judaism and how much they had learned by being on the march with, as one marcher described it: “40 days and 5000 rabbis!”  We shared about who we were and what we believed.  And we asked more questions.  And we laughed.  We were a family, because at that moment, what brought us together, was more powerful than whatever differences we may have had.

         We got to the discussion about the complicated definition of Judaism.  Is it only a religion?  Is it a people?  Is it a race?  That there is no one answer to this question should not be surprising, but at one point during this discussion, I turned to a gentleman next to me named Royal, who would be teaching us that evening, and tried to describe it the most rabbinic way I know how: by asking a question.  “Do you feel pride when a person of color achieves something, like an honor or a high elected office?” I asked.  He said that he did.  I connected this to the pride I feel, and I imagine many of us feel, when a Jewish person does the same, or likewise the difficulty we have when a Jewish person does something publicly immoral, like run a Ponzi scheme.  I hadn’t made that connection so explicitly between Judaism and the Black experience before.  It was an important realization for me, and I hope for Royal.  It was an important discussion for all of us, and it would not have happened without a willingness to question and a willingness to answer honestly.

When I headed down to South Carolina, I wasn’t expecting to come away with an appreciation for, and a desire for more inter-religious dialogue, but come back with it I did.  In the next year, I’d like us to start reaching out to different faith based communities and congregations in the spirit of inter-religious dialogue because we will learn about others, and we will learn about ourselves.

Our scriptures point to examples of inter-religious dialogue and its benefits for the Jewish community.  One prominent example comes in the book of Exodus.  Moses’ father-in-law Jethro is a priest of Midian.  Yitro[1], as he’s known in Hebrew happens to give name to the portion during which God gives Moses the 10 commandments.  This is technically because the portion starts with his name, but also, many would suggest, because of his prominent role in the narrative.  In many ways, it is Jethro who prepares the Israelites to receive God’s laws. 

Jethro seeks out Moses at Sinai, having heard what God did for the people Israel in Egypt.  And when Jethro arrives, he sees a harried and tired Moses spending all day adjudicating all the Israelites’ disputes, the petty and the significant, because at that point, Moses is the only one who knows all of God’s rules.  Remember, the people have seen the plagues cripple Egypt and they witnessed God’s power at the parting of the Sea of Reeds, but only Moses has heard God’s voice and commands. 

Jethro, as a priest in his own right, has experience with these sorts of matters and he urges Moses to establish a system of judges, who know the rules, who can help with the smaller claims, who will help Moses carry the burden of being a prophet of God.  No sooner does Jethro suggest this, than Moses enacts it.  And then, the next thing that Moses does is ascend the Mountain.  The Torah tells us that Moses goes up and then God calls to him.[2]  Is it only through Jethro’s prodding that the entire system of Jewish Law and jurisprudence exists today!?  Just like Moses, sometimes, we can learn a lot about the best way to be who we want to be by looking at best practices of others.  If we want to know what might work for us, we need to be willing to ask questions of others. 

Now, the rabbis of the Talmud and commentators on the Torah are not so comfortable with Jewish practice being created, or even advised, by someone who is not Jewish.  The midrash and the Talmud make a point of saying that Jethro must have converted to Judaism,[3] though there is no evidence for that in the texts.  The rabbis of blessed memory were living in a time when reaching out to others was not so easy.  They lived in a time when Judaism was under attack and when focusing inward to thwart incursion was an important objective.  We don’t live in such times.  Our times are not perfect, and there are those who still dislike Jews.  But on the whole, we are blessed to live safely in this nation.  While the state of Judaism in America can sometimes be complicated, and God knows that we have enough trouble talking with our own, in this day and age, it is important to know who our neighbors are, what they hold important and what they value.  We may find we have much more in common than separates us. 

If we begin to have conversations with other communities, we can begin to understand our neighbors, their practices and beliefs, their customs and priorities.  We’re not aiming to agree with everyone about everything, because there will be serious differences, and that’s not the purpose.  But, if we begin to learn about others’ practices, we can hopefully come to a place of respect and understanding, which is the goal.  We could easily learn about other faith traditions, and we should.  But it is more important to learn from them.  We can read from and study their sacred texts and histories, but it is an incomplete study, and would do a disservice to our neighbors. 

This is all on the individual level.  We will also learn about their communities, how they handle difficult times, where they draw their strength to continue in the face of the realities of an era in religious affiliation.  It’s not just Judaism that is suffering declining affiliation rates, after all.  What do these other communities do to engage their members?  What do these other communities do to stretch a budget?  How do other communities maintain their traditions while still moving forward?  These are all questions that every religious community asks, and we can learn a lot from each other.

But inter-religious dialogue doesn’t just help us learn about others and what they do.  It also asks us to look deeply at ourselves.  If we are to answer questions like the one Middle Passage asked about diluting Judaism, we need to know what we believe and how we came to that belief.  We need to know how to answer questions about God, Judaism, and the role of Torah in our lives.  We need to have a sense of what we value, what gives us strength, and what troubles us.  What we may find is that by engaging with those who are different than us we come to a better understanding of who we are, and come to have more pride, and dare I say faith, in who we are and what we believe.  Do we each have answers to these questions: What do you believe about the divinity of the Torah?  What do you believe about God’s role in your life?  What do you believe about the role of Jewish Law?  Where are you comfortable drawing the line?  And finally, the follow up to all of these questions: Why?  These are important questions for Jews, and we take too little time to answer these kinds of questions when we are insulated in our own community.

But we won’t just learn more about ourselves and our beliefs; we’ll also find a new pride in our identities as Jews.  When I was teaching in Atlanta, I worked with 7^th and 8^th-graders teaching Jewish Studies.  Some of you who are or have been teachers may groan at this, and yes, teaching middle school is an acquired taste, but I loved it.  The students were energetic and witty.  They understood our sacred texts and their meanings in new and different ways.  As a part of my research for my master’s degree, I interviewed a number of 8^th-graders about their Jewish Identity.  We had spent that year focused on Jewish Identity.  What I learned, among many other fascinating findings, was that for these 8^th-graders, they felt the most pride in their Judaism when they were able to explain their beliefs and their Judaism to peers who were not Jewish.  They would go off to their summer sports camps and summer academic programs and meet people of all different religious traditions, and they would often have to explain what it meant to be Jewish.  They described a sense of pride at being able to articulate what it was that made them Jewish.

          Being able to articulate our Judaism to others serves another important purpose.  While it is true that we live in unprecedented safety and security in this nation in 2015, there are still many people who have little to no understanding of Judaism.  Imagine what we can teach others about Jews and Judaism.  What impressions and understandings of Judaism can we share?  What light can we bear to others?  What appreciation of who we are and what we value can we impart?  Just as we will come to understand others, we will strive to have others understand us.  When personal and communal relationships are fostered, incendiary rhetoric can be tempered.  That is an admirable and important goal in this era of 140-character character-assassinations and hyperbolic insinuation.  

When Middle Passage asked, “Aren’t we a nice family?” he was mostly joking, because of how different we all were, each of us at that table for dinner.  But there was a profound understanding of the power of different people coming together.  The Hebrew word for family, mishpacha, comes from a root meaning to join together.  So in many ways, MP was not at all wrong about his assertion.  We joined together to share a meal.  We joined together to march for shared values.  We joined together to share about ourselves and learn from others.  In this new year, let us expand our family table to learn about others and learn about ourselves.  Let us expand our understanding of other faith traditions and by doing so come to a better understanding of our own.

Shanah Tovah!

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[1] Thanks to Rabbi Josh Stanton for his help seeing the fullness of Jethro’s relationship with Moses.

[2] Exodus 19:3

[3] See Rashi on Exodus 18:1, and sources.

Interfaith Thanksgiving Sermon - Rededication to Thanksgiving

A version of this sermon was presented on November 24, 2013 at the East Meadow Interfaith Thanksgiving Service held at East Meadow United Methodist Church.

Good evening.  I’m Rabbi Daniel Bar-Nahum and I am the newly installed Rabbi at Temple Emanu-El of East Meadow.  First, let me thank Rev. Stevens for her hard work in hosting and planning this special service.  I have come to learn quickly that one of the many traditions of this service is that the newest clergy in town is honored by giving the homily, and I thank you for this honor.

I must say that I am very excited because this is truly a once in a lifetime opportunity.  Let me explain what I mean by that, because I don’t mean that I refuse to do this ever again, God forbid!

Tonight, I have a once in a lifetime opportunity because this year, for what is ostensibly the first time in history, and the last time ever, the holidays of Thanksgiving and Hanukkah coincide such that Thanksgiving, which is this Thursday is also the first day of Hanukkah.  As Jews, we begin our holidays the evening before, so we will be lighting our candles beginning on Wednesday evening this week.  In the years 2070 and 2165, the first candle of Hanukkah’s eight will be lit on Thanksgiving night, so the first day of Hanukkah will not be on Thanksgiving, but rather Black Friday, which is a sermon for another time.

This coincidental celebration is a quirk of the confluence of the Hebrew and American calendars.  Let me explain, briefly.  Thanksgiving is always the 4th Thursday of the month, that part’s easy.  Hanukkah is always the 25th of the Hebrew month of Kislev, which usually falls in mid-December. But, the Jewish calendar is based on the moon, and lunar months are only 29 or 30 days.  This means that a Jewish 12-month year is always a couple weeks shorter than our January to December 12-month year.  We make up for this shortfall of days by adding an additional month, a leap month, into our calendar 7 out of every 19 years in a system that I trust the internet to tell me about.  This is why Jewish holidays seemingly drift around the calendar.  They shift a couple weeks earlier for a couple years and then we adjust the calendar and push everything a month forward.

This year, Hanukkah is as early as it will ever be and Thanksgiving is as late as it can ever be, and even though the calendars do cycle, the first day of Hanukkah and Thanksgiving Day will never again coincide.  In the spirit of truth, I must admit that calculations have shown that this will actually happen again in the year 79,811. This is why this year’s homily is truly a once in a lifetime opportunity for me!

Tradition tells us that Hanukkah celebrates an important victory for Jewish worship and Jewish autonomy.  In the 2nd century BCE, the Syrian Greeks led by Antiochus had outlawed Jewish worship in Judea, in what is modern day Israel.  The Jews revolted against the Greek decrees and fought to maintain autonomy of their nation and their worship.  The Greeks had a habit of taking over religious sites and converting them to Greek temples to their gods.  The Greeks did this with the Temple in Jerusalem.  When the Maccabees defeated the Greeks, they rededicated the Temple in Jerusalem to God.  The work Hanukkah means dedication or in this case, rededication.  Hanukkah is about a fight for religious freedom.

Thanksgiving is also about religious freedom.  When the pilgrims made their way to these shores, they did so in order to maintain their identity and their religious convictions.  They came from a place where the political and religious turmoil did not allow them to worship as they saw fit.  These two holidays, Thanksgiving and Hanukkah celebrate, at their core, freedom of worship and the ability to choose how to worship.

There is much that we can simply take in about Hanukkah and Thanksgiving, but there is more that we can be challenged to do and to think about.

Thanksgiving is also a day when we pause, with our compatriots all across this country, and recognize the blessings and the gifts that we have.  As we gather together on Thanksgiving, we look around at our families and our friends, at our homes and the festive meals we have been planning for days and are blessed to set upon our table.  In the midst of the parades and the football, the sales and the anxiety of the upcoming Holiday Season, we pause and reflect on what really matters.  We recognize those aspects of our lives which are deserving of thanks and we name them.  “What am I thankful for this year?” we ask.  And then everyone gets a turn to share. This small ritual of Thanksgiving is so important because it highlights an important aspect of what it means to be American and what it means to be a person of religious conviction: thankfulness.

What will you answer when it is your turn?  How will you find ways to show your thanks on Thanksgiving Day?

One element of thankfulness is recognition.  A quick look at the psalms shows us that when we thank God, we name those things for which we are thankful.  From Psalm 136: “O give thanks to the Eternal, for He is good, for His kindness is forever…Who makes the heavens in wisdom…who stamps firm the earth on the waters, who makes the great lights…”  It goes on to name the many miracles that the Eternal wrought for our ancestors in ancient days.  The Psalmist is teaching us that to be thankful is to recognize our gifts and name them.  When we look at our families and our friends, our coworkers or even strangers whom we have invited to share our bounty, and we name that for which we are thankful, we participate in thanks of recognition.

Another aspect of thankfulness is appreciation.  It is not just about naming those things for which we are thankful.  By giving ourselves over to appreciation, we recognize in others and in the Divine Presence those elements which make our lives special and which give it true meaning.  Appreciation involves an understanding of why what we have is special and why we are so fortunate to have it.  Those facets of our lives which we appreciate most are often those which are intangible.  The laughter following a decades’ old family joke.  The smell of the one recipe without which it’s just not Thanksgiving.  The sense of warmth of a family gathered together.  The memories of Thanksgivings past, our loved ones of blessed memory vivid in our minds.  These intangibles are the sustenance on which a thanksgiving meal is truly built.  When Hannah, in First Samuel (2), prays to the Eternal with words of praise for God’s might, she does so in thanks for the family that was granted her when it seemed impossible.  Hannah appreciates what God does for her and so she prays a prayer of thanksgiving.

Thankfulness seems easy when broken down this way.  First, naming: what do I have that I am thankful for?  Second: Appreciation, how do I feel about having these things?  A two-step process.

Unfortunately, too often we don’t take the time to do this.  Too often we expect.  We expect that we will have the comforts of life to which we have become accustomed.  We expect that everything will work exactly as it should all the time.  That which we expect is the common, the habitual, the usual.  And, rather than be thankful on a daily basis for these pieces of our lives, too often we take them for granted.

Toward the beginning of a Jewish morning service, there are two blessings juxtaposed one right next to the other.  One is called Asher Yatzar and one is called Elohai Neshamah.  These two blessings, respectively, thank and bless God for the miracle of a working body and the miracle of an independent soul.  These two blessings are traditionally the first two blessings one recites upon waking each morning.  Each morning, therefore, Jewish tradition asks us to wake up, recognize the expected, and thank God for them.  Rather than take for granted the working of the body, mind and soul, we ought to recognize the blessings inherent in them and thank God for them.  In our modern lives, too much is expected, not enough is revered, and even less is taken for what it is, a blessing.

But that is not the case on Thanksgiving.  On this one day, seemingly everyone takes the time to say thank you and appreciate what they have.  On this one day, seemingly the entire nation pauses in a moment of gratitude.  This year, as Hanukkah, a festival of rededication, and Thanksgiving coincide, I challenge us: how can we rededicate ourselves to a spirit of thankfulness?  Thankfulness for the daily gifts which we have.  Thankfulness for the miracles of every day modern living.  Thankfulness for the easy and the hard in life.  How can we make it so that Thanksgiving and the sentiment surrounding it are the rule, not the exception?  How can we begin to live our lives in the spirit of gratitude rather than the spirit of expectation?

A couple of suggestions.  First, bring back the dying art of the handwritten thank you note.  A note of this kind requires that you name and appreciate.  And, the recipient knows that you are appreciative and that their work did not go unnoticed.  Second, start a gratitude journal.  Every day, take one to two minutes and write down one thing, or many, for which you are thankful.  Jot it down in a notebook and name and appreciate the blessings in your life.  These notes can serve as a form of prayer, which is the third suggestion:  When you pray, be sure to thank God.  Thank God for the good.  Thank God for the challenging.  Thank God for the usual.  Thank God for the unusual.  Show God your appreciation!  “Shout out to the Eternal! … Worship the Eternal in rejoicing; come before God in joyous song.  Know that God made us and we are God’s.  Come into God’s gates in thanksgiving, God’s courts in praise.  Acclaim God, bless God’s name, for the Eternal is good, God’s kindnesses and God’s faithfulness last for all generations.” (Psalm 100)

Let us all commit to making this year’s Thanksgiving the day we decided to begin in earnest showing our appreciation for our lives and for the many gifts and blessings we have.  Yes, life can be difficult at times and sometimes we may feel like there is very little to be thankful for.  But when we work hard at finding even the smallest of things… When we are thankful daily, habitually, we are more keenly aware of the world around us, our relationships, and our needs.  We are also, and perhaps most importantly, more aware of God’s workings in this world.  And, when we are aware of God’s working in the world, we are better able to see our place in the ongoing work of Creation.  We find ourselves rededicated not just to thankfulness, gratitude and appreciation, but, like the Temple in Jerusalem, rededicated to the Eternal.  Rededicated to serving God with gladness.

May God bless us all with many gifts over these next weeks.  May God look down upon us with favor.  And let us all be willing to say thank you.

Happy Thanksgiving