Wishing of Thanksgiving

I’ve always enjoyed Thanksgiving.

It’s one of the only holidays that centers around two of my favorite things - food and people I love. So many of our holidays, it seems, have been converted into commercial monstrosities that are barely connected today from their pure origins.

I also like this holiday because it’s somewhat reflective. Specifically a time to give thanks and express gratitude for those good things in our lives. Some of us have a lot to be thankful for, and some of us quite a bit less. But if we pause, I think most of us have something we can say aloud makes our life richer.

The thing about gratitude and thanksgiving is that it’s hard to see when your head is down. When you’re looking only at the ground under your feet. When you are looking only at the path in front of, at the toil of your life, of the work that remains, the pain of the past, and the fatigue in your soul.

Thanksgiving comes not from the doing. It comes from the stopping - long enough to look around, in all directions and steal a moment or two from this life where you can soak in its goodness and revel in its depth, complexity, and richness.

One of my favorite quotes on this comes from author Kurt Vonnegut.

“And I urge you to please notice when you are happy, and exclaim or murmur or think at some point, ‘If this isn’t nice, I don’t know what is.”

I don’t stop sometimes. I don’t always look around. Lately, I think, my head is down, and I’ve not been fully looking up, or around.

But today, I woke up to the sound of my grandchildren laughing and singing. I watched them paint and create. Today, I am using my hands and my experience to craft a meal. Today, I will sit at a table with people I care for, and we will fill our souls with each others’ love.

And today, I will reflect on so many of you - my friends, who I feel so lucky and grateful to have in my life. There are so many of you who have been so special to me. And there’s no real way for me to tell all of you how much you’ve meant to me, and how much you’ve added to my life. It feels like such a privilege to have another family of people around me, in my community and in my state. Thank you. So very much.

I hope today brings all of you peace and gratitude. I hope you get to spend the day with people you care about. I hope you get the chance to stop what you’re doing, even for a minute, and soak up the sounds, the smells, the feeling of what it is to love and be loved. To be grateful and give thanks.

I hope you can take it all in and say to yourself “If this isn’t nice, I don’t know what is.”