[SB] Thanksgiving Sabbath Blessing

[Molly Wolf]

Thanksgiving

If there were two things I could export from Canada to the United States, 
they would be (first) the loonie and toonie -- our one- and two-dollar 
coins, which are exceedingly sensible objects -- and (second) our date of 
Thanksgiving. Which is, in fact, today.

I cannot imagine a better time of year to stop and give thanks for 
Creation. This tends to be one of the loveliest times of year, with few 
exceptions. Today, it's so mild that I'm working outdoors with my laptop. 
The sky is the sort of blue that chocolate would be if chocolate were blue. 
The trees are just about to turn; we're perched on the cusp between summer 
and glory. The light glints off the lake surface, turning it to a sheet of 
rippled silver, sliced white by a boat's wake and dotted with sails as 
everyone hustles to get in one more afternoon on the water before bringing 
her inshore for the winter. The apples are in, and they are beauties this 
year; there are pie pumpkins piled up for sale at the farmers' market, and 
fresh cabbages and mild, sweet, white potatoes.

It's a very good time to stop, take a good deep breath, and hold Creation 
lovingly in attention. It's an especially good moment because it's also 
that time when we know that we've lost our grip on summer and that winter 
lies on the other side of Fall Mud Season, a few weeks away. There's 
nothing like the expectation of loss to make you truly appreciate 
something, and this beauty (we know) will be pretty much gone in about 
three weeks' time, succeeded by a quieter, thoughtful loveliness.

Which sounds gloomy and pessimistic, but it isn't. It's a statement of 
reality, and of a reality I particularly treasure. I honestly don't think I 
could live in a place that didn't have true seasons -- that didn't undergo 
the shifts and turnings that we live with, those of us who are a certain 
distance from the equator. I may bitch about winter, especially during its 
sluggish tail into Spring Mud Season, but I'd miss it dreadfully. I'd miss 
the bite and the beauty. Other climates doubtless have their virtues and 
their adherents, and that's fine, but without competing with them, I'd 
argue that my landscape's climate has its particular spiritual virtue. It 
makes Creation (and therefore, if you're thinking along those lines, the 
Creator) a matter of power and immediacy.

There is nothing bland about this season; it sings and it shouts. It sings 
of glory and it shouts thanks for the summer's completion and the incoming 
harvest.   Its beauty is uncompromising and in-your-face, full of power and 
vibrancy, overflowing in splendour. It stops you dead in your tracks, 
caught by a flash of gold, of God. That's why it's such a good time for 
Thanksgiving.

More than that: you know, if you live here, that the seasons swing around 
with a sameness that's deeply comforting and reminds us that huge, 
important things lie outside our lives and our control. The fate of nation 
or a church may lie in our hands, but the season's don't; they're the 
Earth's business and far beyond us, just as the Sun was there long, long 
before our primate ancestors snuffled for bugs and will be there long after 
this rock is cold, old, and done with us. It was good -- a deeply humbling 
good -- that God chose to spend some time dwelling with us and walking 
among us, bridging the gap between us and Godself; it is (to me at least) 
the deepest comfort that God is steadily, unchangingly, bigger than all 
Creation, vast as Creation is. It means that there's a steadiness under my 
feet, a trustworthiness.

The season reminds me of that. It reminds me that my worries are tiny in 
comparison with the greatness of God. It reminds me that, however often I 
miss it, God's love shines like the golden light under the trees throughout 
my life, and that I should stop fretting and remember that. It reminds me 
to trust in the turn of things and wait for the time to turn around again, 
as the seasons wheel.

It reminds me to stop and rest and be thankful for all the ways in which 
God's hands have been over and under me, even in Interesting Times. It 
reminds me that beauty is always there, if I can remember to look for it. 
Always.

It's a good time, Canadian Thanksgiving. And having dual citizenship, I get 
to celebrate the other one too.