Enough Is As Good As a Feast

We are officially entering into our Holiday Season in a matter of days as we usher in another Thanksgiving. For many of us, this means the gathering of extended family, of mild drunken displays, awkward political debates and matronly hugs smelling of pie crust and expensive perfume. We will sit at a table laden with traditional fare, glasses clanking,voices chattering and silverware scraping up the last tid-bits of food. Afterwards, perhaps the men will watch football on a large screen TV while the women clean up and gossip. Everyone is stuffed and uncomfortable, our minds might wander to our next Holiday Purchase, the next Big Thing.

Historically though, Thanksgiving Day was a celebration not only of the harvest season, but to honor the collaboration of unlikely partners. Per Wikipedia, this partnership was started by a Wampangoag tribal man named Squanto, who taught the settlers to catch eel, grow corn and served as an interpreter for them with the rest of his tribe (he learned English when he as a slave in England). Full stop. Squanto was enslaved in England, yet when he saw his oppressors come to his homeland, he offered his help and expertise so they might survive? In a world where we feel we must discriminate against others, or allow fear to dictate national policy that constricts providing aid, this demonstration of compassion and forgiveness moves me greatly.

This one man’s gesture of offering help profoundly affected the course of a whole country, and makes me realize what we are all capable of. So I challenge us to think about what we have, right now, and how we might not only be satisfied, but live in abundance. And I’m not talking about money. We all have various gifts bestowed on us: empathy, talent, good health or intellect. What if these gifts were enough to live well? What if we received abundance from others? From the friend who always makes us laugh uncontrollably, from the child who places a chubby hand in yours and calls you mother, or the stranger who showed an act of kindness that nearly broke you because it happened on a day when you desperately needed kindness.

I enjoy my Thanksgiving Day as much as anyone else. It’s a day of comfort and love, of memories that will shape my lifetime. But there is much going on in the world and right across the street, and it is good to take pause and think about what it is I am actually thankful for, and why.

As our largest Holiday Season begins and boasts consumerism as way of love and affection, I implore you to think about a man from long ago who didn’t go to a shopping mall, but gave of himself, so that others might have enough.