Poem

The leftover turkey sits in ziplock bags in the refrigerator,
Pie tins half full (or empty) of pumpkin and apple call your name,
The china waits patiently to be put back in the cupboard,
And the crumbs of the great feast yesterday are scattered around.

What makes for Thanksgiving?  What recipe can be followed to fill our hearts with gratitude?
Is it food?
Is it family or friends?
Is it the anticipation and expectation of a day set apart?
Is it the preparation that tells our hearts something is about to happen?
Is it the sharing around the table, each naming a gratitude and thanks?
Is it, in class multiple guess quiz style, "All the above"?

And if we agree that it is all and more than what we can name,
Why not practice these things more than just one day?
See the food as an amazing gift from the good earth and the hands that have helped prepare it.
Invite friends and family over for meals more often.
See every day with audacious and indescribable hope...as Mary Oliver says in her poem Praying, "...this isn’t
a contest but the doorway
into thanks, and a silence in which
another voice may speak.” 

What is that voice speaking to you on this day after Thanksgiving?
Is it critical of what wasn't or amazed at what was?
Is it quiet in these early morning hours?
Or frenzied with Black Friday sale shopping?
Is it uncertain?  Because here you on the brink of a new day, on the brink of everything, the unknown future is now the present and here YOU are...in this moment...with this breath...which might be used to give thanks.

May these posts and thoughts and random ideas about giving thanks have awaken an attitude of gratitude and posture of praise and thought of thanksgiving that might linger and last beyond the month of November with traces of God's grace.

Amen!