A Different Kind of Gathering at Thanksgiving
“Gratitude takes nothing for granted, is never unresponsive, is constantly awakening to new wonder.”
Thomas Merton
Thanksgiving is one of my favorite seasons of the year. It is simply focused on gathering with our people. But this year, Thanksgiving will be different in so many ways.
Smaller, simpler, quieter, less travel, fewer people around the table.
We are living through a global pandemic in real time and now for longer than any of us imagined when it all began back in March. The uncertainty and prolonged waiting brings with it disappointment, disruption, and challenges to our familiar ways of celebrating. We have learned that with Sunday morning worship, birthdays, weddings, graduations, baby showers, summer vacation, and now what we call the holiday season which kicks off with Thanksgiving. At our house, that means we will be missing some of our kids and their families as well as less freedom to open our table to friends and neighbors.
Still, we will have the smells of cinnamon, nutmeg, and maple syrup. And we have our determined creativity. We can bake and deliver our warm baked goods to doorsteps of friends and strangers alike, waving from the sidewalk. And we can keep the heart of Thanksgiving - giving thanks and celebrating God’s provision of his good earth with a feast. Those deep purposes are still available and within reach this year even with a much smaller gathering in the midst of being scattered.
Here are three simple things I am doing that might help you keep the heart of Thanksgiving even in a global pandemic.
Practicing tiny thanks.
Sometime back when August rolled into September, I started a daily practice of beginning my day by writing down three thanks from the day before. I sit with my coffee and a lit candle and reflect on the day before, choosing three things I’m most thankful for and write them into my planner at the top of my priorities for the day. These can be big or small, material or spiritual, extraordinary or plain.
I have found that I not only enjoy beginning my day this way, but also how it frames what I see all day. I find myself asking, will this be what finds its way onto the top three list, or will it be surpassed by something yet to come? How can this latest disappointment become a way to focus on my deeper thankfulness? This practice is making me live gratefully and expectantly even as I wait for God’s promises, which is just right for Advent.
The longer I practice cultivating a grateful heart, the more alert I become to God’s workings all around me and the more resilience is being formed in my heart.
Count your gratefulness and listening as valuable prayers.
Our thankfulness leads to paying closer attention to what is happening and how God might be moving in our lives. I’ve been learning that gratefulness is a valuable form of prayer that can be easily skipped over. It is easy in our achievement oriented world to discount a prayer life that listens and responds well - to our own hearts, to others, and to God.
Once you begin your gratefulness practice, notice how much more it causes you to listen and pay attention to the people, seasons, and whole world around you. Thankfulness grows healthy families and communities for it is not merely pie in the sky. Being grateful is rooted in reality and hope.
What may follow your thanks are good questions born out of your gratefulness:
• How can I care for my neighbor when we are not together?
• What new kind of hospitality is God inviting me into that is both for and beyond my own family?
• Who might need to hear how much they are missed?
3. Gather the outside and bring it in.
I have already begun gathering leaves, acorns, chestnuts, and mossy twigs for my Thanksgiving table. This gathering might be the best kind in a time when we aren’t gathering in person in order to care for those at higher risk for complications due to Covid and the health care providers on the front line at our hospitals.
This kind of paying attention to the changing season and gathering the bounty into your arms and bringing it in is both formative and makes a beautiful centerpiece. My friend, Krista, has her kids write their thanks right on the leaves and fills the table with thanksgiving. I like to put branches in pitchers or nuts in mason jars and set them among the leaves and candles.
One of my favorite Advent books is all about how various animals prepare for winter by gathering nuts and growing winter coats. It is called “All Creation Waits” and is a great book for kids and adults to learn together about all the seasonal changes right out their back door.
4. Start turning your heart toward Advent.
I never want to rush Thanksgiving - the holiday or the condition of my heart. Holding space for noticing the seasons, being grateful out loud, feasting and lingering around the table with the people in your life, and adding a few strangers too, prepares the ground for the repentance and new life to follow.
Cultivating a heart of gratitude is the perfect preparation for Advent which begins the Sunday after Thanksgiving.
I grew up with dear Thanksgiving traditions like going to Louisiana to pick pecans. But I did not grow up celebrating Advent. That came years later when Mike needed emergency heart surgery and all our days slowed and lost their markers. There were no workdays and weekends, no school year and summertime, to mark the time. I needed grounding in a new kind of calendar. I discovered that solid ground by immersing my life in the seasons and love of Christ’s life.
Psalm 89 captures that kind of ground so well,
“Your love, God, is my song, and I will sing it! I’ll never quit telling the story of you love - How you built the cosmos and guaranteed everything in it. Your love has always been the foundation of our lives, your fidelity has been the roof over our world.”
Why do I love the Advent season? Advent is so much more than Christmas. It begins in thankfulness, moves through the whole Christmas story, and on into Epiphany when the Persian Magi followed the star to worship the king. It is part of God’s bigger love story when he broke through and visited us here on earth, living and breathing inside a human body. But Advent isisn’t only a looking back to a baby in a manger, it includes a future with a second coming.
While I am talking of turning toward Advent, Episcopal preacher Fleming Rutledge reminds us,
“God is out ahead of us . . . God is on the move to us, not the other way around.”
That is a profound reversal of perspective, something I need to be reminded of.
This year, I added my own Advent adventure to my devotional library. I have always dreamed of creating an Advent devotional study full of beauty, goodness and truth. One perk of Covid19 is a burst of creativity pouring out of me and the space to attend it. I responded by seizing the moment for reading the Christmas story fresh and slow and over and over again.
Here’s a peek at an Advent adventure named after Mary’s strong and brave answer to God’s question, Can I come live in you? Her answer, “fiat mihi” - let it be to me according to your word. She could have said no.
This devotional includes poetry, thoughtful questions, and spiritual practices to deepen your Advent experience.
This video says they’re coming soon, but the truth is they’re here now and available for order right now and here.
“Fiat mihi” is Mary’s yes to God’s invitation to bring light into a dark world. I want to say my own “Yes and Amen!” to Jesus making his home in me. Join me on an Advent adventure.
This Thanksgiving, I hope you start with tiny thanks, count thankfulness as valuable prayer, gather the outdoors and bring it in, and turn your heart toward Advent. However you celebrate, may you bless those around you with God’s loving care.