[Oe List ...] Thanksgiving musing

[LAURELCG at aol.com]

Jaime,
As usual, I enjoyed your article, but hardly think the wild turkey is  
endangered. I could be wrong, but they are quite numerous in coast range hills  
of California.
 
Blessings,
Jann McGuire
 
 
In a message dated 11/20/2012 4:51:35 A.M. Pacific Standard Time,  
svesjaime at aol.com writes:

The usual  caveat: curious, welcome; not, see you at the bend.

j'aime la vie  


Yesterday,  appreciate; tomorrow, anticipate; today, participate. In all,  
Celebrate!



-----Original  Message-----
From: Jaime R Vergara <jrvergarajr2031 at aol.com>
To:  jayvee_vallejera <jayvee_vallejera at saipantribune.com>; mark_rabago  
<mark_rabago at saipantribune.com>; editor  <editor at saipantribune.com>
Sent: Tue, Nov 20, 2012 8:48  pm
Subject: For Thursday


T-Day
 
Three  perspectives underlie the structure of Christian thought in the last 
two  millennia.  The most familiar one is transcendence where paradise in 
the  metaphor of heaven is located elsewhere than where we currently are.   
Then there is earthly immanence, the transformation that occurs when one  
unconditionally embraces the fullness of life in the here-and-now.  The  third 
is the spirit of freedom, transparent exercise of responsibility in the  
realm of finite historical choices.
 
In  ritual, these perspectives were intoned in the medieval formula of 
naming  realities, "In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost!"  In 
 current parlance, that would be rehearsing the role of the Terminator, the 
 Transformer, and the Turkey!
 
Human  civilization ritualize certain events like the culmination of a 
harvest, the  completion of a monumental task, or just the satisfaction over the 
passing of  a crisis.  Gratitude is a garden variety of human virtue.  It 
joins  other modes of affirmed consciousness in the practices of personal 
confession,  societal petition, and relational intercession, long observed in 
prayerful  communities.
 
We tarry  along the religious path of this national holiday because most 
Americans  gather around family tables this day in the mythology of the first  
perspective.  In such spirit began the annual celebration after Abraham  
Lincoln in 1863 proclaimed a national day of "Thanksgiving and Praise to our  
beneficent Father who dwelleth in Heaven".
 
Brownscombe 1914 painting of Plymouth  settlers feasting with natives has 
become a familiar visual to accounts.   Historians tell of 53 Plymouth 
settlers and 90 Indians holding a three-day  feast after the settlers survived 
their first year of harsh winter.   (Revisionists point out that narratives, at 
least, need to acknowledge how the  native residents were later turned into 
targets on T-day's turkey  shoots!)
 
FDR  nailed the date down to the fourth Thursday of November, to settle the 
 uncertainty of day on those years when there are five Thursdays in 
November.  Not all States complied.  It became a joke that when there were  five 
Thursday, observance on the fourth made it Democratic while on the fifth,  
Republican.
 
The  celebration has commercially evolved into a season of shopping, marked 
by  Macy's Parade, merrily rolls down the store aisles until way past New 
Year,  with the apex reached with Santa's gifts under the Tannenbaum bought 
and  wrapped before Christmas eve.  The intrusion of the dollar into the  
equation watered down the religious emphasis specifically made Christian in  
the presidential proclamations of Presbyterian pastor's son Grover Cleveland  
and staunch Methodist William McKinley.
 
Gerald  Ford made the day totally secular skewing previous references to 
providence in  his proclamation.  The media was not pleased.  Ford lost the 
next  election.  Ronald Reagan chuckled the "pardoning" of the proffered  
turkey, and George H. W. Bush made the practice a permanent fixture in the  
annual presidential ritual.  Bill Clinton emphasized gratitude to those  who 
serve to promote the American vision and implement its mission.   George W. 
Bush took the task of international peace into the war room on  terror after 
9/11.  Obama was criticized for not thanking "God" in his  proclamation of 
2011.  American sentiment shifted.  Obama got  reelected.  
 
Along  with many College and Professional Sports' events, Holiday movies 
get a  Thanksgiving premiere to test their weight in the box office.  The  
pumpkin pie remains a dinner staple but the contest is in the field on the  
biggest and heaviest variety raised.  Meanwhile, the wild turkey joins  the 
list of the endangered specie.  The t-bird that graces holiday tables  lost its 
thunder and smell, coming from coops where they are fattened for  weight.  
The meat hardly emits the familiar fragrant fowl flavor and  aroma 
characteristic of the wild bird in the prairies now relegated to the  trademark of a 
Bourbon.
 
Thanksgiving Day in China has all the  trappings of western commercial 
symbols devoid of historical moorings.   In Saipan, we render obeisance to 
providential divinity in the cosmic  realm.  It is a matter of course but 
irrelevant.  In my campus  building, gratitude is echoed by the Anshallah of 
Muslims from Africa,  the Middle East, South-Southeast Asia who share my 
building's morning elevator  ride with their gracious salutations of Salaam Malaikom! 
Grace drapes  the diversity.
 
Save for  a lone Protestant evangelical, we do not see much of the 
transformative  messianic impulse, amazingly gracious, or otherwise.  The once  
'puritanical' CPC battles corruption within its ranks, with President Hu  Jintao 
declaring at the recent Party Congress that if the practice is not  
curtailed, it will be the death knell of the Party and the government in the  next 
decade.  The hyperbole on service reminiscent of Mao's vaunted  service is 
met by a skeptical smirk.  The current gap of income  distribution is deep 
and wide.  That's all that seem to matter in a newly  affluent and resurgent 
China.
 
The  Terminator remained with Ahnold in California.  The Transformer is 
still  a toy but got animated in the fight between the autobots and the 
decepticons.  As for my gobble gobble, I will stick with the turkey!
 

j'aime la vie  


Yesterday, appreciate;  tomorrow, anticipate; today, participate.  In  all, 
Celebrate!





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