Last Sunday, I participated in the annual Brookline Interfaith Thanksgiving service. The Reverend Candace Nicolds delivered the brief address. Reverend Nicolds is the Senior Minister of Brookline Church of Christ. Her talk was so beautiful and Mussar-like, that I asked her permission to share it with you as the teaching for this week. I hope you find it as meaningful and thought-provoking as I did.
‘I remember as a young child often hearing my parents ask, “What do you say?” Perhaps you remember something similar, or perhaps you have said it to your own children. “What do you say?” As I recall, there were two possible answers to this question, “excuse me” and “thank you.” You said “excuse me” if you were responding to something you yourself did; you said “thank you” if you were responding to something someone else did.
Learning to say “thank you” as soon as we learn to speak is an important part of our development. It is a mark of civility and helps to connect us to other human beings. A child who does not say “thank you” is often seen as spoiled; an adult who doesn’t say “thank you” is considered arrogant. We say “thank you” as a way to acknowledge the part another has played in benefitting our lives, and this is right and good.
But I don’t think that simply being a person who says “thank you” makes anyone a thankful person. Being a thankful person is not simply about saying “thank you” for things we have just received or for something that someone has just done for us. I believe that being a thankful person entails acknowledging everything we have - and are - as something for which we should say “thank you.” But I have found that doing that - even being aware of all that we have - is much easier said than done. Why is that?
If you will bear with me, I would like to tell you a personal story, a story about my late mother, may she rest in peace.
My mother was born on a small farm outside of Albuquerque, New Mexico, at the height of the Great Depression. She spent several years of her childhood in a home that did not have electricity or indoor plumbing and that was heated by a wood stove. Of course, as an adult, she enjoyed all of the modern comforts with which we are familiar. She had a career and raised a family and had a rich, full life. But in her last few years, she suffered with dementia, which would often steal the memories of the years between her childhood and her present day. I had the immense privilege of caring for her during that time, a blessing for which I shall be eternally grateful.
I have many cherished memories of that time, but one memory in particular kept coming to me as I reflected on thankfulness over the last few weeks.
It was first thing in the morning and I had gone in to help her get up for the day. I followed her into the bathroom, flipping the light switch as I went. She stopped, turned around, and said, “You just - did that - and the light came on.” I’m sure I must have thought at that moment, “Oh, it’s going to be one of those days.” I helped her wash her hands, and, again, she paused - this time to marvel at the running water. I settled her in her chair with the blankets over her lap and turned on the space heater next to her - she was always so cold. She stared at it, and, as the warm air began to blow, she looked up at me with awe in her eyes and said, “Everything here is magic.”
Now it was my turn to be brought up short. I confess that this was a season in my life during which I struggled to be thankful. But that morning, as I witnessed her sense of wonder at the things which I had always known, I realized that there were many things for which I could be thankful, things that, quite frankly, I had simply taken for granted because they had always been part of my life.
It is right and good to say “thank you” when we receive something we did not have before or when someone does something for us. But to be a thankful person involves more. One thing we can do which I believe can help us become thankful people is to slow down and acknowledge everything in our lives as something for which we ought to give thanks - everything we have, everyone we know, all that we are.
The Rev. Peter Raible (a Unitarian Universalist minister) wrote a paraphrase of Deuteronomy 6:10-12 from the Hebrew Bible that goes like this:
“We build on foundations we did not lay.
We warm ourselves at fires we did not light.
We sit in the shade of trees we did not plant.
We drink from wells we did not dig.
We profit from persons we did not know.
We are ever bound in community.”
Being thankful binds us in a way to all of humanity - the community that currently surrounds us and the community of people who have gone before.
As people of faith, though, I think we can take that a step further and say that being a thankful person binds us to God, the ultimate Source of all things, the Giver of life itself.
As we enter this week of Thanksgiving, it is right and good that we join with the wider culture around us in giving thanks for all that we have received this year. But as we carry on beyond this week, may we strive to become thankful people, and in this way be bound to all humanity and to God.’
Shabbat Shalom,
Rabbi Marcia Plumb
