[Oe List ...] Thanksgiving Reflection

[Rod Rippel]

Someone posted the Mayflower Compact with the comments by Thomas Berry a while back.  I remember it and added a few reflections.  Rod Rippel



THANKSGIVING REFLECTION



            Most of our holidays in the US come to us as imports from The Old World, being taken from the Christian liturgical calendar.  The Church, in turn, took them from older Pagan cultures and transformed them into Holy Days celebrated throughout  Christendom.  Of our own holidays, only two are uniquely American, those being Independence Day and Thanksgiving.



            A feast seems entirely appropriate for a celebration of giving thanks.  The traditional servings at Thanksgiving include foods which are originally from America, not found in the Old world.  These include corn, potatoes and, of course, turkey (a bird once nominated to be our National Symbol by Benjamin Franklin).  Thanksgiving became an official holiday in 1863, when, in the midst of the Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln proclaimed a national day of “Thanksgiving and Praise…to God.”  Lincoln designated Thursday, November 26, to be celebrated as a national holiday.



In the mythology of the country, Thanksgiving is often connected to the feast celebrated by the Pilgrims and Indians in the Plymouth colony in 1621.  That feast lasted for three days and was attended by approximately 50 Pilgrims and 90 indigenous Americans.  I imagine the Native Americans supplied the corn (and perhaps the turkeys) while the Colonists saw to it that there was plenty of beer (an Old World beverage) to last the three days.  Even then, excess was a mark of thanksgiving feasts; a tradition we continue to observe. 



            I’m intrigued by the various connections between the Old World and the New when it comes to our Thanksgiving Holiday celebration.  How would such a tenuous connection be symbolized meaningfully in our current feasting?  And what of the contributions of the Indigenous Americans to our current practice of Thanksgiving?  What are they and how would we symbolize those connections today?



Of course we are highly conscious of the Colonists’ contributions for which we give thanks, their Faith and civic traditions, their social customs, history and learning.  But what vestiges, if any, of the cultures and learning’s of Native Peoples of America have survived or retained in our current holiday?  Not much. 



            When I was a member of the Order:Ecumenical in the late 60’s we would symbolize the roots of Thanksgiving in particular and US civic development in general by having someone read out loud The Mayflower Compact at our Thanksgiving meal.

This would be followed by a corporate conversation led by one member on the blessings (and failings) of the ‘civil body politic’ since those earlier times.  These were always meaningful and sobering conversations.



Here’s the Compact: 

IN THE name of God, Amen.

We whose names are underwritten, the loyal subjects of our dread sovereign Lord, King James, by the grace of God, of Great Britain, France and Ireland king, defender of the faith, etc., having undertaken, for the glory of God, and advancement of the Christian faith, and honor of our king and country, a voyage to plant the first colony in the Northern parts of Virginia, do by these presents solemnly and mutually in the presence of God, and one of another, covenant and combine ourselves together into a civil body politic, for our better ordering and preservation and furtherance of the ends aforesaid; and by virtue hereof to enact, constitute, and frame such just and equal laws, ordinances, acts, constitutions, and offices, from time to time, as shall be thought most meet and convenient for the general good of the colony, unto which we promise all due submission and obedience.

In witness whereof we have hereunder subscribed our names at Cape-Cod the 11 of November, in the year of the reign of our sovereign lord, King James, of England, France, and Ireland the eighteenth, and of Scotland the fifty-fourth. Anno Domine 1620.



(A Side Note:  The Pilgrims, having spent some time in liberal Holland, before going to Great Britain, do not appear to be too enamored of the Trinity!)



(2nd Side Note:  Such a reading at the Thanksgiving Table shifts the meaning of Thanksgiving itself away from simply being a meal with Thanks, but towards the corporate blessings bestowed by our ‘civil body politic,’ and introduces the possible notes of repentance and forgiveness).





SOMETHING TO ‘CHEW ON’ WHEN WE CELEBRATE THANKSGIVING 



            Thomas Berry in his book, The Great Work, juxtaposes the culture of the American Indians and that of the Europeans settlers. The arrival of the Europeans in North America, he says, “could be considered as one of the more fateful moments in history, not only of this continent but of the entire planet…. Every living being on this continent might have shuddered with foreboding when that first tiny sail appeared over the Atlantic horizon.”



               The aboriginal peoples of North America and the European settlers held two sharply contending views of nature. “To indigenous people…the natural world was the manifestation of a numinous presence that gave meaning to all existence…. As seen by the Europeans the continent was here to serve human purposes though trade and commerce, as well as through the more immediate personal and household needs of the colonists. They had nothing spiritual to learn from this continent. Their attitude toward the land as primarily for use was the critical issue”



Culturally derived beliefs about the role of humans in the world caused insuperable difficulty for the Europeans in establishing any intimate rapport with the North American continent or its people.  According to Thomas, “Such orientation of Western consciousness had its fourfold origin in the Greek [humanistic] cultural tradition, the biblical-Christian religious tradition, the English political-legal tradition, and the economic tradition associated with the new vigor of the merchant class.”   To the Europeans “Their human-spiritual formation was complete before they came. They came, [they thought,] with the finest religion of the world, the highest intellectual, aesthetic, and moral development, the finest jurisprudence. They needed this continent simply as a political refuge and as a region to be exploited.”  They were committed to a “divinely commissioned task of commercially exploiting this continent [and] could even experience a high spiritual exaltation in what [they] were doing.”





Only now, after 3000 years of hearing the Judeo Christian imperative of “Be fruitful and multiply, subdue the earth and have dominion over all its creatures” are we turning our ears to the suffering of nature and our planet.  We see how lonely it will be without our fellow-creatures who are being lost as a result of our selfishness.  How our action and exploitation is spoiling the only nest we have.  How our stewardship has proven short-sighted.  Perhaps Thanksgiving can be transformed into a true ecological holiday celebration; one that includes our responsibility not only for ‘the civil body politic’ but for all life on the planet.




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