Thanksgiving Day Is Every Day

“While washing the dishes one should only be washing the dishes,

which means that while washing the dishes

one should be completely aware of the fact that one is washing the dishes.”

~Thich Nhat Hanh. (1976). The miracle of mindfulness: a manual on meditation , p. 3

“I shall promise You one thing God, just one very small thing,

I shall never burden my today with cares about my tomorrow,

though that takes some practice. Each day is sufficient unto itself.”

~Etty Hillesum, An Interrupted Life and Letters from Westerbrook , p. 178*

Every day is athanksgiving day, every moment we are alive is a thanksgiving moment, every eonwe are not alive is a thanksgiving eternity. Though there may not be a “who” 10billion years from now to give thanks, today’s “who” can thank the force andforces which have come together over time to create this bowl to clean and thisglass to dry.

In the book, Taste& See: Experiencing The Goodness Of God With Our Five senses, Ginny Kubitz Moyer takes a reader on a tourof each of these precious gifts, which we use each moment of each day. Among her chapter titles are: Sight – Gazing,Created Beauty, Color; Hearing – Voices, Background Noise, Music; Smell –Smells of Childhood, Lavender, The Odor of the Sheep; Touch – Water, TheRosary, Comfort; and Taste – The No Thank You Bite, The Pleasure of Food,Kissing. The chapters, she says, “deal with common, everyday experiences:hearing the voice of a loved one, admiring the colors of a rose garden, feelingthe touch of water on the skin” (p. xvi).

Those gifts surround useach day, as does the air we breathe, the grass that grows, and the wind thatblows.

Every day isthanksgiving day, no better or worse than any other day. No different, exceptthat we give priority and attention to all we are grateful for. This reminderday is a blessing in and of itself.

Thanksgiving Day is a humbling day, a reminder of all that the gifts that surround us that we have contributed to, but even more a reminder of all the gifts that surround us and, indeed, infuse and comprise us, that we have contributed nothing to, but which bless us every moment of every day. I have a heart that beats, lungs that expand and contract, bones, ears, none of which I did one single thing to earn. Today, this Thanksgiving Day, I humbly remember these gifts and all the others in my life and the world(s) surrounding.

This special day eachyear to celebrate our gifts and to give thanks for them is a gift given andreceived and given once again. The eventis meaningful, but its usefulness is increased if it leads to and reinforces dailypractices of gratefulness. For it is in the “practices” of grateful living andgenerosity wherethe lasting and deep benefits lie.

Today I give thanks formy wife, my children, my grandchildren, my brother and sisters, for all myfamily and my friends; for my mental, physical, emotional, and spiritualhealth; for the physical and metaphysical, the divine and the material, thatare gifts every moment of every day.

In fact, it isimpossible for me to list everything there is to be grateful for, so here aretwo sources that do it it so well.

The first is the HaudenosauneeThanksgiving Address . “You can’t listen to the Thanksgiving Addresswithout feeling wealthy,” Robin Wall Kimmerer says. She describes it as “a riverof words as old as the people themselves, known more accurately in the Onondagalanguage as the Words That Come Before All Else. This ancient order of protocolsets gratitude as the highest priority” (p. 107).

The second is the Canticleof Brother Sun and Sister Moon (written) and in a video here by St.Francis. I have this written in my journal I love it so.

Thanksgiving Day isevery day. Today we celebrate the blessings of every day.

Thank you and thank you and thank you.

EttyHillesum:

“Esther "Etty" Hillesum was theDutch author of confessional letters and diaries which describe both herreligious awakening and the persecutions of Jewish people in Amsterdam duringthe German occupation. In 1943 she was deported and killed in Auschwitz concentrationcamp.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Etty_Hillesum

Reference:

Hillesum, E. (1996). Aninterrupted life: the diaries, 1941-1943; and, Letters from Westerbork . NewYork: Henry Holt.

Kimmerer, R. W. (2013). Braiding sweetgrass (First edition. ed.). Minneapolis, Minnesota: Milkweed Editions.

Moyer, G. K. (2016). Taste& see: experiencing the goodness of God with our five senses . Chicago:Loyola Press.

Nhất, T, N. (1976).

Themiracle of mindfulness: a manual on meditation

 (M. Vo-Dinh, Trans.).Boston: Beacon Press.