Gratitude For Life

I heard on the radio yesterday how airports and highway patrol and train stations are preparing for the extra number of people expected to be traveling this Thanksgiving weekend. They called it the Superbowl of Travel Days. I was touched by the idea that everyone seems to want to go home and spend time with kin. I was sad to hear, right after the election two weeks ago, that some families are cancelling their Thanksgiving gathering because individual family members are not willing to sit down with people who voted differently from the way that they had. I hope most of them have relaxed enough to remember the many other dimensions of relationships that have endured over years. Even the awkward moments, “Remember Uncle Charlie’s bad jokes” and, “Margaret brought that same terrible pie year after year,” that endure even after people die, are part of the legacy conversation of family meals. My children, all adults now, already tease about “Remember what Mom and Dad used to say…” at family dinners. Stories and reminiscences are the glue that connects us to a group of people who fill out our identity. Everyone who has been part of our life is part of who we are now.

I am looking forward to sitting down with nineteen people this afternoon and I feel grateful that they are all still there and I am still there. For incalculable reasons, it might have been otherwise, but it isn’t.

May everyone, everywhere, have enough to eat today.

May everyone have people who remember them and care for them.

May all of us who have enough keep those who do not have enough in our hearts and minds. May we be inspired to serve this world. May this be a world of justice and peace.