Thanksgiving 2008

[hermionesviolin]

Heading to lunch on Wednesday, I asked MaryAlice if Laura was coming.  She said she was on the phone with her family, had been for most of the morning.  I am so grateful that my family's so low-stress (about holidays, and about most everything really).  My grandma's very "This is how 'we' do things" and kind of passive-aggressive and whatever, but that's always been at a manageable level (though holidays will be so much less stressful after she's gone) and she's the only one who's like that.

Listening to MaryAlice talk about Laura, I was just like: holidays aren't worth the stress.  I mean, they're supposed to be about celebrating and family, right? not about putting together somebody's idea of a perfect dinner extravaganza.

I really like TLGN's post on Thanksgiving -- excerpt:

I love Thanksgiving because it's a holiday that is totally, completely, entirely about food; no one is pretending it's about anything else. (Except for football. Thanksgiving is also about football.)

And I love Thanksgiving because it's about giving thanks and speaking your gratitude to others.

[...]

I'm thankful that I'm here, celebrating. I'm thankful that you are somewhere, celebrating something (if not Thanksgiving, then Thursday. I like Thursdays; they are usually worth celebrating).

I had 3 Thanksgiving dinners this week and am still not excited about Thanksgiving food, and I have never cared about food, but I really like the idea of focusing on what one is grateful for and explicitly articulating one's gratitude.

Yes, I think one should be grateful more than once a year (see also my discomfort with Catholic Confession -- I was always like, "But you just confess to God directly when you're sorry;" I had problems with both the intercessor and the delay) but we're often not good at doing things like that on a regular basis (I'm always a little weirded out by Confessional prayer in church -- a practice I didn't grow up with -- in part because I have serious difficulty recalling stuff from the past week in that context unless there are things particularly still nagging at me, though I do appreciate the formal reminder that we should confess and that, as the Rest & Bread service says, "We are a forgiven people"), so I do like institutional structures to ensure that we do it at least sometimes.  (See also: Days of Awe.)

***

HBS has a "getting pies and giving thanks" tradition -- free pies and notecards provided to say thank you to coworkers, other staff members, etc.  I, unsurprisingly, wrote ones for two of the people I like best in my department, but I was pleasantly surprised to get two myself.

25Nov2008
Dear Elizabeth,
    Thank you for all the work you do to keep NOM functioning smoothly!  Walking in + sharing a smile + hello with you is such a great way to start my day in the office.
Happy Thanksgiving!
-Kathleen

Elizabeth-
Thanks for showing me the ropes this summer/fall :)
Have a great Thanksgiving!
-Sara :)


I was going to do Affirmations/gratitude for a subset of flisters like I did 2 years ago, but I just didn't get my act together.  I am v. v. grateful for the Internet, however.  By which I mostly mean "fandom on LiveJournal" -- though I adore things like IMDb and Wikipedia and Google for quick researching, and blogs which expose me to so many ideas and topics I wouldn't get otherwise, and online versions of newspapers and magazines.


CallunaV posted:

We did it.

A couple days ago, I posted a link to someone trying to raise money for her friends not to be foreclosed on. The family needed $10,000.00. The writer was asking people to donate $1.

They made it over $10,000.00 today.

We did it.


We can do this.

Comments

[thelastgoodname.livejournal.com]

That might be why Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday: even when we know that we should be more explicit about our gratitude, we often forget. It's amazing (and somewhat disheartening) to me how much difference a simple "thank you" can make -- and how often people don't say it.

[wisdomeagle]

(I'm always a little weirded out by Confessional prayer in church -- a practice I didn't grow up with -- in part because I have serious difficulty recalling stuff from the past week in that context unless there are things particularly still nagging at me, though I do appreciate the formal reminder that we should confess and that, as the Rest & Bread service says, "We are a forgiven people")

I love confession/assurance of pardon. It comes as the very first part of our liturgy at APL, and Rev. S. gives us abundant time for silent prayer and reflection (which is usually pretty wracking me for, I know you're shocked what with my clear lack of Issues and all), and then calls us out of it with the assurance of pardon which per Google goes like this:

As a called and ordained minister in the church of Christ, I declare to you the forgiveness of all your sins, in the name of the Father, and the Son+, and the Holy Spirit.

Complaint number 375 about LoL (yes really, and at least they're good enough to pun on it themselves) Lutheran that I attended the other night: exactly 0 seconds of silent reflection before the assurance of pardon.

[hermionesviolin.livejournal.com]

Props to APL! During silent prayer times I always feel like I've barely gotten myself focused when we're done. I always zone out during CHPC's Assurance of Pardon (which is extemporaneous), but I like the one we do at Rest & Bread, which is a version of "Jesus says: Come to me all who are weary..." which I can't quite fully recall from memory* and ends "We are a forgiven people" and then we all say "Amen."

* Edit:

Assurance of Grace

Jesus said, Come to me, all of you who are tired from carrying heavy loads. And I will give you rest. Take my yoke and put it on you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in spirit, and you will find rest; for the yoke I will give you is easy and the load I will put on you is light. We are a forgiven people. Amen.