[Oe List ...] Thanksgiving Reflection

Mon Nov 26 17:40:59 PST 2012

Thanks, really a stretch to be thankful for all the past . . . not to mention the present, future, etc.

Jim Wiegel

"Life has got a habit of not standing hitched.  You got to ride it like you find it..  You got to change with it."  Woody Guthrie

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--- On Mon, 11/26/12, Rod Rippel <rodrippel at cox.net> wrote:

From: Rod Rippel <rodrippel at cox.net>
Subject: [Oe List ...] Thanksgiving Reflection
To: "Order Ecumenical Community" <oe at lists.wedgeblade.net>
Date: Monday, November 26, 2012, 4:54 PM

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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