Thanksgiving

This week I met with a small group of clergy colleagues in my town, leaders in a number of different faith communities. This meeting was planned months ago, and one of the main agenda items was planning an interfaith Thanksgiving service, here in our town, in which all of our congregations – and hopefully some more – would participate. I went to the meeting unsure of what it would be like, whether the agenda would be different in light of news headlines this week. The headlines have been enraging, depressing, horrifying, and just all kinds of bad. On some level, I wanted those headlines to become the main focus of the meeting. I was in a place of anger and despair and wanted to feel like I was “doing something” about all those bad things in the news. It did not help my mood when I arrived really late. Later than my usual late. I missed the opening prayer, and a lot of the beginning conversation. Did my colleagues pray about the headlines? Did any of the issues in the news come up as the group greeted one another and talked? I’m not sure. When I arrived, they were planning a Thanksgiving service.

At first the conversation felt hard. Many of my colleagues looked tired, very weary, in a particular way that clergy sometimes do. People from many different parts of town were there, and there were cultural differences, socio-economic differences, and linguistic differences in the congregations represented. The news headlines would not affect all of these congregations in the same way. Did we even share the same concerns, the same problems, the same hopes? The conversation felt halting and hesitant. There were awkward pauses as Spanish was translated into English and back again. I suggested Friday night for the service, forgetting the obvious fact that a Friday night service would exclude our Jewish and Muslim brothers and sisters. This blunder embarrassed me; I shouldn’t let such basic things slip my mind. But finally a non-Friday-night time and place were agreed upon.

And then some enthusiasm began to arise in the room. Something happened. The mood changed, and I don’t think it was “just me.” The feeling in the whole room, the whole flow of conversation, was different. There was more smiling. People began asking more questions and offering more suggestions, finding voice and finding commonalities, jumping in to participate. The topic was the same – the simple planning of a Thanksgiving service. But I felt like what was happening, even our relationships, were somehow being transformed. I left the meeting feeling excited and … hopeful.

And why not feel hopeful about this small meeting of people of faith, in a small community, in a big world where faith seems to be becoming less and less relevant by the day? But that’s just the thing. It was faith that got us into the room together, and faith that transformed the conversation from a sort of fatigued, frustrating awkwardness into an experience of connection, relationship, and enthusiasm (which means “God within”). We were planning a Thanksgiving service, a service to come together from all of our different places, all of our different lives, and give Thanks to God because it is clear to us that God is, even now, doing things in our lives that we can be thankful for. This might be the only conviction that every person in that room held in common. We shared a commitment that, in spite of the news headlines – or perhaps all the more because of them - that one conviction is still important. Life-changing, perhaps even life-saving. That one common belief – God is doing things in our lives that we can be thankful for – is enough to come together about, enough to be in community about. It is enough to cross the barriers that make relationship difficult. It is enough to transform. Perhaps in these days of violence, rage, terror, apathy, hatred, and the list goes on … perhaps now it is more important than ever not only that this little meeting happened, but that we stuck to our silly little agenda of planning a Thanksgiving service. There is other hard work for all of us to do in our faith communities, our neighborhoods, our nation and our world. There is still a lot of hard conversation ahead for all of us. But I’m glad that in that moment, this moment, we did not lose our grasp on the hope of coming together to praise God, to give thanks.

The Rev. Amanda K. Gott

​Grace & St. Peter's Episcopal Church

Hamden, CT​