For this most amazing what?

i thank You God for most this amazing

day:for the leaping greenly spirits of trees 

and a blue true dream of sky;and for everything

which is natural which is infinite which is yes

(e.e. cummings)

It’s been a year of deep loss and broad discomfort.  There is no need to inventory the specifics just now; the simple acknowledgement of them suffices - the comfortless losses, the discouraging disappointments, the occasional physical blips that are the down payments on aging.  As Daylight Savings Time was running out of ticks and we prepared to “fall back”, I agreed with the meme’s sentiment that, “an extra hour of 2023 was like getting a bonus track on a Yoko Ono album.”  Just a little extra screaming.

But suddenly - and “suddenly” is exactly the way it feels - the year is nudging up against its close, and we stand at the door of Thanksgiving, knocking.  Inside, the familiar motions and smells both occupy us and intoxicate us - the roasting, the baking, the carving, the spooning.  But what else?  The poet Cummings’ prompt is a familiar ritual around the Thanksgiving table - counting blessings; naming gratitudes.  Anticipating, this year, more of a struggle when it comes my turn, I’ve determined to get an early start:

“I thank you God for most...”

How shall I complete my own edition of the poem?

Certainly I am thankful for the beautifully obvious - the daily presence of surrounding love, the sheltering warmth of a comfortable home situated amongst trees and prairie and sky and birds that routinely and reliably evoke and inspire and humble; the nudging nuzzlings of two idiosyncratic corgis who reliably comfort, forgive, amuse and forbid me from growing overly preoccupied with myself; for a flock of chickens who daily remind me that life is never a “big picture” but consists of food and water and a free range sufficient for that single day; and of course my own life and health, never mind the increasingly familiar stiffnesses and technological augmentations.

But now that I am thinking about it, the list spontaneously grows.  I’m thankful for the experience of garden grace, manifest in the form of nourishing abundance despite our inattentions.  I’m grateful for the fruit trees’ reminder that while I get fixated on and blindered by chronos - clock time - there is that other kind of time, kairos - the “right” time, God’s time - that progresses at a different pace; and that in their own “right time” we gathered in cherries and apricots for the very first time.  I am thankful that, even in the present absence of grief, I am kept company by dear and intimate memories of treasured moments shared, the echo of stories told and affections spoken.  I am thankful for friendships nurtured and renewed around the table and fire and the altar of creation, along with new ones gestating in the mingling of fresh exchanges.  

I am thankful, then, for the muchness of memory, but in equal measure, I’m finally realizing, for the expansiveness of possibility - the “moreness” that is yet in front of me that goes beyond leftover turkey and dressing and homemade pie.  It is the blue sky blessing of which the poet spoke:  the...

 

    “everything

    which is natural 

    which is infinite 

    which is yes”

Happy Thanksgiving, then - 

These hours and activities of palpitating gratitude for this new day, 

this fresh feast, 

for this infinite, 

awakening

 “yes.”