A Thanksgiving Message from Sr. Walter Maher, VP University Mission & Ministry
My parents taught me to give thanks to God for my daily bread. They also taught me to show gratitude when I receive gifts from others. However, sometimes I forget that thanksgiving should not only be practiced during the moments I get what I want, but even when I do not.
It is sometimes difficult to give thanks during moments in our lives when things are not going according to plan, and we feel that we have been cheated or given the short end of the stick. For many of us, the present situation in the USA makes it hard to be grateful.
When things are rough, it is so easy to forget to give thanks for the gift of a new day. But that new day is a chance to reach out to those we love and even those who might need to know they are loved. It is a chance to enjoy and give thanks for good food, great friends, and wonderful family (even from a distance), and a chance to turn around and say, “Thank you, God. I am well now in many ways.”
This Thanksgiving, as our friends and family gather, and just as everything is ready to be brought to the table, we will engage in the most common Thanksgiving table ritual: Someone will preface it with a few words about gratitude, and how fortunate we all are, especially when we consider so many others in the world. And then, he or she will frame this Thanksgiving table ritual with the question: “What are you thankful for?” Then, we will go around the circle, offering things for which we are thankful.
Sometimes it will be thoughtful, sometimes it will be awkwardly mumbled, and most of the time, it will be predictable: family, or getting together like this, or good health. This Thanksgiving, however, I am inviting all of us to change things a little. Instead of allowing our Thanksgiving table ritual to be, once again, about expressing gratitude about some-thing (i.e., material things, successes, achievements, the stuff of our lives), what about changing the preposition “for” and use other prepositions to open our imagination to see and experience gratefulness as something deeper than the mere appreciation for things we have. How about using questions like these?
- To whom are you grateful?
- What challenges have you been grateful through?
- Have you been grateful with others?
- Where have you discovered gratitude bubbling up, spontaneously, within?
- Has something in your life been changed by being grateful?
- In what circumstances have you experienced thankfulness?
As we celebrate Thanksgiving Day, I invite all of us to expand our sense of gratitude and, if possible, to use O. Eugene Pickett’s Giving Thanks Poem: as an ending to our Thanksgiving table ritual:
For the expanding grandeur of creation, worlds known and unknown, galaxies beyond galaxies, filling us with awe and challenging our imaginations: We give thanks this day.
For this fragile planet earth, its times and tides, its sunsets and seasons: We give thanks this day.
For the joy of human life, its wonders and surprises, its hopes and achievements: We give thanks this day.
For our human community, our common past and future hope, our oneness transcending all separation, our capacity to work for peace and justice in the midst of hostility and oppression: We give thanks this day.
For high hopes and noble causes, for faith without fanaticism, for understanding of views not shared: We give thanks this day.
For all who have labored and suffered for a fairer world, who have lived so that others might live in dignity and freedom: We give thanks this day.
For human liberty and sacred rites, for opportunities to change and grow, to affirm and choose: We give thanks this day.
Sr. Walter Maher, CCVI
VP of Mission and Ministry