Day of Thanks
This post will be short and sweet, as they say. Today is Thanksgiving, although I'm not sure how the words got turned around, for the day is all about Giving Thanks. Yesterday was difficult for my wife and I, minor issues that seemed to keep piling up until bedtime when we gave each other a puzzled look as to why we were exhausted. My mother-in-law is now staying with us due to health reasons, and I had just finished cooking the seventh turkey, an annual practice (although usually five and not seven) of bringing turkeys and the resulting add-ons down to the homeless outdoor facility located under one of the freeway overpasses. Last week I was talking with Jennie who has run the operation for well over 20 years, and she asked me what motivates me to come and bring such food donations week after week and with such regularity (it's something I've done now for nearly 17 years), and I told her that it's a reminder for me that it is a fine line between standing on this side of the tables serving vs. standing on the other side waiting for a meal. She looked at me and said, "There's a bit of wisdom in that."
We all have our unsung causes, being a caretaker or raising children or volunteering in some form or helping a friend or stranger. These are nothing that we expect to get rewarded for or to receive a pat on the back at some ceremony. These are just parts of us, and they are happening all over the world every day, every hour, and happening millions of times, all the time. At my mother's care facility, they heard about my going down to the homeless and began a food drive for Thanksgiving. They also began having the residents do projects that would benefit the homeless, wrapping disposable razors (sorely needed by the homeless) with donated toothbrushes and toothpaste and tying a small ribbon around each tiny bag. As Jennie told me, this was perhaps the best donation in years, a win-win for all sides as the giving and effort spreads.
Days such as this always help return us to a better vantage point, not one where we see how many are lacking (yesterday's news said that 7 million are going hungry in Yemen due to the escalated conflict), but rather how much each of us has in our lives. The word blessed is often used, and religious or not, it is often an appropriate word, one defined as: to make or declare holy by a spoken formula or a sign...to favor or endow...to make happy or prosperous; gladden...to think (oneself) happy. What's that saying, my worst day is often the best day in someone else's life? A series of lectures I'm listening to now is on a section of Buddhist thinking, of each moment being the only moment, that life is impermanent and always changing so we should quit clinging to that which we cannot hang on to...people, things, even life. There is the now, as they say, and that is all that there is.
Seven turkeys, all of this from someone who doesn't eat meat. And in truth, I couldn't help but wonder about all those lives, the grocery shelves overflowing with those familiar somewhat rounded and frozen shapes, each neatly packaged and ready for the oven. Each would feed ten or more people, perhaps saving ten lives by giving up their own. It's an odd world at times, each of us surviving whether we are bacteria or a planet, some of us struggling to do so and some of us not. My wife and I are fortunate to still be here, to still be breathing and to be able to go to bed exhausted and to wake up to greet yet another morning and not be hungry or wondering how or if we will make it through. As we walked our dogs last night, we were "blessed" with yet another spectacular sunset, the golds and pinks somehow reminding me that last week was the equally spectacular display of the Leonid meteor shower. Those meteoric bright streaks we might be lucky enough to witness are little more than a grain of sand or a pebble building with ice and breaking away. It was as incomprehensible and as amazing as each sunrise and sunset. On this day, it was also a reminder that it is often the smallest things make the biggest impact...our small blessings.
We all have our unsung causes, being a caretaker or raising children or volunteering in some form or helping a friend or stranger. These are nothing that we expect to get rewarded for or to receive a pat on the back at some ceremony. These are just parts of us, and they are happening all over the world every day, every hour, and happening millions of times, all the time. At my mother's care facility, they heard about my going down to the homeless and began a food drive for Thanksgiving. They also began having the residents do projects that would benefit the homeless, wrapping disposable razors (sorely needed by the homeless) with donated toothbrushes and toothpaste and tying a small ribbon around each tiny bag. As Jennie told me, this was perhaps the best donation in years, a win-win for all sides as the giving and effort spreads.
Days such as this always help return us to a better vantage point, not one where we see how many are lacking (yesterday's news said that 7 million are going hungry in Yemen due to the escalated conflict), but rather how much each of us has in our lives. The word blessed is often used, and religious or not, it is often an appropriate word, one defined as: to make or declare holy by a spoken formula or a sign...to favor or endow...to make happy or prosperous; gladden...to think (oneself) happy. What's that saying, my worst day is often the best day in someone else's life? A series of lectures I'm listening to now is on a section of Buddhist thinking, of each moment being the only moment, that life is impermanent and always changing so we should quit clinging to that which we cannot hang on to...people, things, even life. There is the now, as they say, and that is all that there is.
Seven turkeys, all of this from someone who doesn't eat meat. And in truth, I couldn't help but wonder about all those lives, the grocery shelves overflowing with those familiar somewhat rounded and frozen shapes, each neatly packaged and ready for the oven. Each would feed ten or more people, perhaps saving ten lives by giving up their own. It's an odd world at times, each of us surviving whether we are bacteria or a planet, some of us struggling to do so and some of us not. My wife and I are fortunate to still be here, to still be breathing and to be able to go to bed exhausted and to wake up to greet yet another morning and not be hungry or wondering how or if we will make it through. As we walked our dogs last night, we were "blessed" with yet another spectacular sunset, the golds and pinks somehow reminding me that last week was the equally spectacular display of the Leonid meteor shower. Those meteoric bright streaks we might be lucky enough to witness are little more than a grain of sand or a pebble building with ice and breaking away. It was as incomprehensible and as amazing as each sunrise and sunset. On this day, it was also a reminder that it is often the smallest things make the biggest impact...our small blessings.
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| A nightly reminder of life... |
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