November 17, 2020

Dear Ones,

In my family we usually travel at Thanksgiving or else have a bunch of family and friends over to our place for the big meal, in part simply because we know that my church duties around Christmas will make it impossible to host a major function or travel for that holiday. So Thanksgiving usually feels more like a family occasion, a true holiday, than Christmas or Easter, which are holy days for sure but have more work associated with them. Thanksgiving is when we get to go all-out!

Obviously, that’s not happening this year. This week we decided to cancel even a very scaled-down celebration with my mom, because it would have involved interstate travel. I know it’s the right decision, but it’s still a big disappointment.

Thanksgiving and the winter holidays that follow are usually times for family reunions and for expressing gratitude for the gifts in our life. It is a hard truth that most of us won’t be able to unite with family members this year. Perhaps, in spite of that, we can find ways to focus our attention on gratitude.

Yes, being grateful is more difficult when we don’t have access to all the normal things that fill us with joy and contentment. But maybe being more intentionally grateful, about even very small things, can actually help create those feelings of joy and contentment.

One example that comes to mind is water. For most of us, access to clean drinking water is so habitual that we don’t think twice about it. And yet water is one of the key elements to sustaining life. In baptism, water is the outward and visible sign of a powerful inner grace, the transformation that occurs when one is adopted into the household of God and made a member of his eternal priesthood.

Before the actual baptism, the part where the water makes contact with the body, the priest says a Thanksgiving over the Water that begins, “We thank you, Almighty God, for the gift of water. Over it the Holy Spirit moved in the beginning of creation.” What a gift indeed!

Perhaps next week our tables will be smaller, with fewer people gathered around. Nevertheless, there are plenty of sources of gratitude all around us. I hope you will place a pitcher of water, or some other similar reminder, on your table, and remember that all that we have and all that we are is a gift.

With gratitude and blessings,

Pamela+