Giving Thanks: A Good Image of Thanksgiving Despite Bad Pilgrims

     Reconciling the way I came to know the world to what I was taught about the word and what I actually see in the world around me is a struggle for me and I believe for other people. Of course, most of our days are not spent in reflection but in action, inaction, or distraction.  However, the change of smoldering summer days to crisp fall air brings about a change in my spirit that invites reflection. A sort of mental gathering around the cook stove to bid farewell to a time of growing and consider what has grown forth.
     I sometimes wonder if the reflection is what brought about the first idea of giving thanks this time of year. The realization that what was grown or gathered from the earth were in fact gifts from the earth. Thereby being gifts from the power that created it and us all and binds us all together. What gifts like those things given could be given without so much as a "Thank you"?
     I don't think that the time of year is merely a coincidence, but rather was selected by an ancient calling for reflection that led to a nationally recognized day. Yet, when I went to school and learned about the holiday that message became lost in a history told by glossy cut outs of funny dressed people and men who hadn't finished dressing for tradish at the Pow-Wow. Later, it just made me angry. The anger really covered up a deep sadness that most people believed that somehow this idea was just "a tradition" inspired by a bad version of history that doesn't belong to us all.
     On Thanksgiving Day I ignore the ideas of bad Pilgrims and savage Indians, because truly neither existed. Neither generalizations were so simple to begin with or universally correct. Each Thanksgiving should be about the year before and not any others. The reason why a president chose the November day to give thanks had little to do with the one taught as "the first Thanksgiving". The reason why we should all celebrate it has everything to do with humanity on this planet and in this country of nations.
    Join me in reflection and thanks. Let us all show the earth more than lip service in the coming year and give something back to the earth that was given to us by a Spirit greater than any one being that inhabits it.