Member-only story
Are You Still Grateful on the Day After Thanksgiving?
And what about the other 364? Will you still be giving thanks?
It is 6:13 am on the day after Thanksgiving. I am not sitting around a festive table with friends. I am not eating turkey and pumpkin pie. I am not listening to 15 people, some of whom I have never met before, telling the rest of us why they are so grateful. I am just laying here in my pajamas, under the covers.
Pillow under my head, comforter up to my chinny chin chin, it is just me here on November 25th – a day no one circles on their calendar.
I can hear the sound of the furnace in the basement below and the sound of my own heart beating. I can see that it’s still dark outside. I know it is my choice whether or not I continue to lounge in my bed or make a pot of coffee.
It is easy to be grateful on the day of Thanksgiving. Of course it’s easy. Everywhere you turn people are reminding you to be grateful.
But what about the other 364 days of the year? What about November 25 and January 19? What about February 27, March 3 and that ridiculously hot day in August when your air conditioning is on the fritz? What about tax day? Are we grateful then?
Jesus may have died for our sins. Forty-six million turkeys may have died for last night’s Thanksgiving dinner, but what is it that’s alive and well within our own hearts right now? And not just for what we have but what has us — that mysterious animating force some people call “God”.
Are we happy for that, even if we have no name to describe it?
“If the only prayer you said in your whole life was, ‘thank you,’ that would suffice.” – Meister Eckhart
Here’s a fun fact: Scientists estimate that the odds of anyone of us being born is one out of 400 trillion. Let that sink in for a moment. One out of 400 trillion. The odds of you or me actually incarnating on this third rock from the sun in a universe that is 93 billion light years wide are slim to none.
And yet.. here we are!
“A thankful heart is not only the greatest virtue, but the parent…
