"In every thing give thanks"

I write this on Thanksgiving Day, 2010. At the office yesterday, as a meeting broke up, I bade my coworkers a happy Thanksgiving and added, "A day without [company] work. We can be thankful for that, if nothing else!" (Oops. The office of our division president was within ten feet of our conference room. The lights were on and the door was open.) Of course I meant to say something else, but I actually did mean what I said.

The title of this blog entry is taken from I Thessalonians 5:18 in the New Testament: "In every thing give thanks, for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus concerning you" (King James Version).

"But wait!" you might say. "This is Thanksgiving. Who said anything about giving thanks? Thanksgiving is for indulgence, not for giving thanks. Giving thanks on Thanksgiving! That’s so seventeenth century! Oh, darn, OK, I’ll give thanks if I must. Thanks be to whomever for whatever. There, I’ve done it. Pass the turkey. Who’s playing this afternoon? What time is the game?"

I almost feel guilty now. What a killjoy. Imagine spoiling someone’s meal with the thought of giving thanks. I should be thankful that nobody will. But I’ve always believed that things should be what they’re called and be called what they are. And if we insist on calling this day Thanksgiving rather than National Gluttony Day, by heaven we’d better give thanks here!

But for what?

My opening anecdote might sound as if I weren’t thankful for my job. Let me be clear. I am grateful for the ability to buy food, clothing, and shelter without anyone’s help. Enough said. Every morning I give thanks for the ability to buy my own food, clothing, and shelter. Every morning I give thanks to the Infinite One for all Its blessings to all Its worlds of manifestation. And every morning the words nearly catch in my throat.

It has always seemed remarkably selfish to me to give thanks for something someone else has not got. Feels rather like the Pharisee in Jesus’ parable who found himself praying near a despised tax collector in the temple in Jerusalem and said, "I thank thee, O Lord, that I am not like this publican." I thank thee, O Lord, that I get to have good stuff even if those hapless wretches living in garbage dumps in Mexico City and Manila don’t. Correction: especially because they don’t.

In my lifetime I’ve had jobs that I thought were decent or even good, with organizations that had earned my respect or affection. I’ve had a job that I thought was awful with an organization that I thought was good. I’ve had jobs that I loathed with organizations I despised. It’s easier to give thanks for the first type than the last. I’ve also been close enough to going without food, clothing, or shelter to be thankful for such as I had. But none of us is more worthy of God’s bounty than anyone else. What we take for our worth is only God’s grace. So what of those who do go without?

Our Pilgrim forebears, who started Thanksgiving, were Protestant Christians. Thanksgiving is, in that sense, an extension of the Christian tradition. Our Pilgrim forebears had come through tough times and were thankful just to be alive. (They were not, thereby, despising their departed brethren, whom they must have regarded as even better off, being "absent from the body, but present with the Lord." Interesting paradox, that.) The most prosperous of these people hadn’t a tenth of what we have. But that’s beside the point. In his own time and place, our Pilgrim forebears’ Lord and Savior had told the wealthy to sell what they had, give the money to the poor, and follow him. Today, in the proud tradition of our Pilgrim forebears and their Lord and Savior, we gorge ourselves like imperial Romans.

Yet just as the Pilgrims’ day was different from ours, so was Jesus’. In his day, there were a few very wealthy men and women, a great many more (indeed, many times more) who subsisted at some level of poverty, and a number somewhere in between who lived–well, somewhere in between. They were not as many or as poor as the poor, nor as few or as rich as the rich. But the sociologists tell us they were not a middle class; they were "retainers" to the wealthy (as if today’s middle class were not). When Jesus told the wealthy to sell what they had and give the money to the poor, he was talking to men who had amassed great wealth without desert, telling them to help men and women who had nothing through no fault of their own, who had nothing because that’s how society was. He thought he would soon introduce a heavenly kingdom where no such inequalities would exist, and he proposed that the unprepared prepare.

Things have turned out rather differently. Today if those who have were to sell all they have and gave the money to those who have not, soon everyone would be poor, because our money economy would collapse. And every one of us is too afraid of having nothing to give up what we have, be it a great lot or a very little.

To be honest, sometimes we give thanks just so as not to render curses. Life is hard enough without resentment. But for what, really, should we give thanks?

We should give thanks that we can give thanks. As the saying goes, "It is better to light one candle than to curse the darkness."

We should give thanks for anything that makes any given moment worth living. And we should give thanks for every moment that is worth living, be they many or few.

Finally, but most importantly, we should give thanks for every opportunity to relieve or prevent someone else’s pain. The Infinite One does not share Its reasons for apportioning pleasure and pain as It does. Every theory about the Infinite is bound to be incoherent to the finite mind, so the likelihood that we will ever understand is virtually nil. But the life the Infinite gives us is most worth living when we make another’s better.