A holiday for most of us.  A holy day for all.  It is like Christmas , Good Friday and Easter, a sacred time that exists in every moment of our lives, though we chose this one day to gather with families and friends, in communities to acknowledge what is pure gift.  Together we acknowledge not just a harvest festival celebrating the successful bringing in of crops and therefore having nourishment for the coming year we also celebrate the bonds that make us and keep us human. We acknowledge the gift of life and the giver of Life.  

Thanksgiving is not just an acknowledgment of the redeemed past in our lives. There we recall we were held, cherished, and affirmed by others in ways that gave us life and led to a more fuller life, and so we salute family, friends, mentors, the kindness of strangers, gifts unexpected but welcomed. We acknowledge that we have been recognized in ways that  show us who we are. And we can ask like the Psalmist, “Who are we that You should be mindful of us, that You should care for us (Ps 8: v.4). In that redeemed past we see that there were times when we were trapped, had reached dead ends and were in situations beyond our control, and were rescued and given new life and a new path.  

Then we discovered a Life beyond and within our present life that cares for us.  This awareness is also a gift and it allows us to live the difficulties of our present life with a certain awareness that whatever we are experiencing now can be transformed by that same love which has saved us in the past.  The gift of the present moment allows us encounter a God who desires to share life with us and opens us to share the life given us with each other.   

Gifts are given to be accepted, opened, used, shared, and celebrated. In one of Tarkovsky’s films an old woman asks the question: Does this road lead to a Church. A man replies he does not know, and the woman answers: Of what use is a road if it does not lead to a Church.

We can recast that response: Of what use is a life if it does not lead to the Source of Life.  When we accept the gift of life, and open it by asking the question: not why does such and such a thing happen to me, but what does God want me to do in this situation, we start using our life to enter into a deeper intimacy with God, and in doing so we discover our real relationships with others and with creation.  That discovery of the inter-relatedness of all of life is a cause for celebration. 

Thanksgiving is the response of those who discover that in the care of giving and receiving, like the lover and the beloved, God, creation and humanity share what each is able to.  In this mutuality is our sense of identity, our sense of community, our sense of what it is to be blessed.   Thanksgiving, however humbly and diversely it is celebrated, acknowledges such blessings and thus blesses.