Thanksgiving Poem

 

Happy Thanksgiving!!  Today I pray you find moments of gratitude amid the complexity and perplexity and contradictions of life.  Today I pray the goodness of life leaves a lasting impression upon your life for the rest of this year and the dawning of a New Year.  I pray the food fuels your life, reminding you that you are connected to God’s good earth.  You have soil and stardust in you, you are made of the earth, and we are caught in a web of life where when the thin fibers shutter with hurt from the trees crying out or an endangered animal or a fellow featherless biped called, “Human” is in pain.  We feel all this because we are connected to all of that is.  Here is a wonderful poem and prayer for today.  Choctaw elder and retired Episcopal bishop Steven Charleston offers a meditation honoring different ways of knowing that have fed his soul:  

 

For all the great thoughts I have read
For all the deep books I have studied
None has brought me nearer to Spirit
Than a walk beneath shimmering leaves

Golden red with the fire of autumn
When the air is crisp
And the sun a pale eye, watching.

I am a scholar of the senses
A theologian of the tangible.

Spirit touches me and I touch Spirit
Each time I lift a leaf from my path
A thin flake of fire golden red
Still warm from the breath that made it.