Reflections on Thanksgiving as an Expression of Theological Conviction, or >>>>> What More Would You Want Than a Little Red Wagon?

>>>>>        Note to My Readers: 

 

The following article is adapted from my response to a question from one of my most thoughtful followers, who asked me about the validity of optimism in the context of realism, in clear recognition that the world is very troubled in the year 2017.  I regard the response as having prospects for directing attention to the potential of each of these holidays for activating the best, too often latent, inclinations of the human spirit.

 

The adaptation of my response to this highly reflective reader is as follows:  

 

I am a big enthusiast for the Thanksgiving holiday and lament how among the holidays as practiced by Christians in the United States the day of expressing gratitude toward God often gets short shrift as people rush to put up Christmas lights, wreathes, and other decorations, and to be thinking already of Christmas in its all too material aspects. 

 

I love Christmas, but Thanksgiving is a very important day to me and well-embedded in the nature of my personal theology: 

 

My prayers to the Divine are entirely prayers of gratitude, for my many blessings but even for the challenges, which keep me from getting too comfortable and from taking those many blessings for granted, and which inevitably strengthen me for the challenges that will next appear.  Other forms of prayer for me, beyond expression of gratitude, I trust to the Divine to understand in the beating of my heart, in the depths of my soul, in the nature of my actions, and as I interact with my fellow human beings. 

 

Life is a gift, to be treasured, lived at the highest level of commitment, guided always by LOVE.  My overwhelming impulse, especially at this time of year, but also throughout the year is to live life gratefully, as a Song of Gratitude to God for the many opportunities to do well and to do good with the Great Gift of Life, the earthly sojourn that as far as we know comes but once.

 

In my expressions of gratitude to the Divine and in my commitment to contribute my energies to improving the current wretched circumstances of humanity in the year 2017, I am a reflexive, inveterate, unrelenting optimist.  I can constitutionally live life no other way.  My mother, who died at age 96 on 16 September 2017, was such an optimist, and this was even truer of her own mother, my maternal grandmother (who died in 1996 at age 101);  despite facing many challenges in life, this towering spiritual presence was the most joyous person I have ever known.

 

My maternal grandmother lived life as a dedicated teacher as well as mother and friend to all of those in her social universe.  I only found out less than five years ago that she, as a teacher in a small town, requested transfer from a school with a mostly middle class student body to a school in a part of town where children grew up in families of severe poverty.  Inasmuch as this is the same vocational commitment that I have made and now express in the New Salem Educational Initiative and as a K-12 revolutionary, finding out about her request of transfer deepened the connection that she and I felt at the core of our beings from the time I was a very young child, on through adulthood.

 

A story that my grandmother told that always touched my mother greatly was the following:

 

My grandmother always asked the children in her class upon return from the Christmas holiday what they did and what they received as gifts.  To one of her most impoverished students she asked this question and received the simple answer, 

 

"A little red wagon." 

 

My grandmother said, "Well, that's great.  What else did you get?"

 

To which the little boy replied, "Well, what more would you want than a little red wagon?" 

 

Though an optimist, I am a severe critic of life as so many people live it in 2017.  I consider endeavoring to do everything I can do to induce people to think and act more responsibly, to love more fully, to treat all people with respect, and to make our society more equitable to be my sacred responsibility.  God has impressed upon me my need to commit my time to work for a far better, truly excellent education for all of our precious children.  In this work I can express the criticism that I have as a realist disgusted with much of life as it is;  while unrelentingly expressing my view as an optimist that life can and will be so much better. 

 

God, the Divine, Allah, Yahweh, the World Soul---expects no less.