Ready for Thankfulness?

As we move into this holiday season, and many people are asking, “Are you ready for Thanksgiving?”  My thoughts wander and construct a new question in my mind… “Are we ready for Giving Thanks?”  These kinds of thoughts always stir in my mind at this season because of how special this holiday was to my mother’s late husband, Phil.  Phil showed me just how meaningful giving thanks was from the first Thanksgiving that I knew him.  Let me share with you what my experience of him was like and what he showed me about the unleashing the full potential of the meaning of Thanksgiving.

At first he seemed just like the rest of the pack of grownups I had known as a child.  You know, obsessed with putting on just the right table cloth, and having each and every place setting perfectly laid out.  This really worried me on the morning of the first Thanksgiving, because, as a young child, I had only experienced households on one side of the family with coldness and perfect regimen (and terror !) or the sloppy, careless, down home warmth of my totally unstructured Native American Grandmother side of the family.  With all of this emphasis he was putting on the table cloth and matching everything, I was naturally getting worried.  Worry was only there for the first Thanksgiving, before I knew what this holiday meant for Phil. 

We were finally seated at that perfect table. (I think he even took photos of the perfect table, which had me feeling totally hopeless that this would be more than an exercise in meaningless ritual). But just then it happened!  He said a nice short prayer, non partisan for a household with a Jew, a Christian, a yogic teenager, and 2 young boys. Then before, the silence was broken he began to speak with a voice full of heart felt tenderness and thoughtful depths.  Honestly, I don’t think I had ever heard any man speak that way before being from a family of rather course country folks.  But my mom had married this Jewish professional guy from the city.  He was like nobody we knew at all.  He really kind of scared us and put us off…until this very moment, our first family Thanksgiving together. 

He started to tell us all of the things he was thankful for in a voice quavering with emotion.  He talked mainly of his relationships with other people including each one of us sitting around the table.  He gave each of us a special kind of thanks while looking us in the eye and letting his eyes flood over with a few tears.  I am sure I had never seen such a sight in my life of a grown man speaking in a fully emotional voice that wasn’t angry, let alone shedding tears.  He showed such grace, vulnerability, and gratitude that I began to truly admire him and admit him deeply into my wounded young heart.  I got to know my mother and my brothers and even my own self so much better that day.  I found out something deep and rich and meaningful about each of us during this process. 

Every year, while Phil was with us, we would repeat this process, and it never lost its freshness.  Never was it the same thing repeated again.  We always met each other anew, each year, around the Thanksgiving table, and went a little deeper in knowing each other.  This process was one of the things that contributed to the intimacy we shared as a family, though we were quite an oddly mixed batch otherwise, all having come from somewhere else to be together for that decade of life alone.  At the end of that time Phil left us, with a case of melanoma dragging him away from this life. 

At his last Thanksgiving we all had many tears.  He was wearing a knit cap by then.  I never had the courage to ask if it was to hide the baldness or to keep his head warm.  I was just a kid.  But what I did learn is the importance of taking note of those things for which one is grateful.  And I learned the power of sharing ones positive inner life with others. 

When we share our intimate inner life with others in a clear way, it is a very powerful force for good in our inner and outer lives.  As we notice the positive things, more of our thoughts become positive, brightening our faces and softening our tones so that others can more positively respond to us.  It is not always easy to remember to become aware of the positive, especially as the days are shrinking in length.  Near the end of November is really a perfect time for us to set aside a day for, collectively remembering and participating together in making gratitude a conscious and shared experience. 

Gratitude is the light of our inner experience.  It can be a light in the darkness, if we remember to cultivate it within. There is always something to be grateful for, even if it is as small as a poppy seed, or as natural as the sun shining. Based on my experience, I encourage you to think of how you might incorporate a meaningful tradition of gratitude and soulful sharing as your loved ones gather together on this Thanksgiving Day.  We deserve more than just a food holiday!  Let us have Gratitude!