Sunday, January 10, 2010

Time Warp!

Let's pretend that it's still November.

I wrote this entry over the Thanksgiving holiday, but since I was at my uncle's house (where internet moves at a glacial pace) I wrote it in Word and forgot about it.  I just found it today when I was poking around on my computer.  So here you are.

Thanksgiving is one of my favorite holidays.  My very favoritest is Easter.  I love the rush of celebrating the resurrection, and all the busy newness of spring.  Everything is growing.  Everything is so full of potential, like the breathless pause before the symphony begins, or the boundless possibilities of a blank page.  I guess you could say that Thanksgiving is the other end of that thought.  It’s the time when things come to completion, when crops have been harvested, when nature lays down to rest after all the fun and frenzy of greener days.  I like that feeling of exhausted satisfaction, as at the end of a productive day, when you look around and take stock of all that you have.  You can’t help feeling grateful.  I like gratefulness because it involves seeing the value of what you’ve been given, and because it means that you are not alone.  When you appreciate something or someone, you are acknowledging that the object of your appreciation somehow makes your life better, and that means that you are not a complete universe unto yourself, but a small piece of an interconnected world.  Now it is possible that only a few of you, dear readers, have ever lost sleep because you were worried that you really were entirely self-sufficient, but those of us who worry about everything are all mighty grateful for our own finiteness.  I'm glad for my neediness, for my loneliness, because it means I was meant for relationship, for adventure and completion.  And if God means for me to be complete (and I believe He does), then who knows what marvelous things will happen to bring it about?

So thanks, everyone, for being part of the adventure that is my life.  I am grateful for you.

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!  Enjoy gorging yourself on Turkey and football.

*Ahem*

...and now we return you to your regularly scheduled program.