Thanksgiving - A Chance To Say, "Fuck the Church, Pass the Gravy":

Sure, sure, the act of "thanksgiving" is a religious thing, but the American Thanksgiving holiday is our greatest secular holiday. Sure, sure, we imbue it with various religious meanings, we may even pray over our meals, but, in the end, those are accessories to the ball gown of the holiday: it's just about community, us, in whatever community we decide to take part in - face-stuffing family, homeless shelter, football watchers at Hooters. In this time of frayed nerves, frayed states, frayed nations, the threads just a child's pull away from the fabric falling to pieces, let's remember that this holiday offers the redemptive hope of community. Like so many things in this life, it is illusory, but every once in a while it's okay to fantasize about something utopian.



(And then let's remember the first sucker of the American dream, Squanto, the Wampanoag guide without whom the Pilgrims would have been squatting in dirt hovels, dehydrating, starving, and shaken to death by disease. Thankfully he died in 1622 so he didn't have to see the destruction he helped bring to his people, to the land.)



Excerpted from the Iroquois, here's something of a prayer for the day:

Now the time has come!

Hear us, Lord of the Sky!

We are here to speak the truth,

for you do not hear lies,

We are your children, Lord of the Sky.



Now in the beginning of all things

You provided that we inherit your creation

You said: I shall make the earth

on which people shall live

And they shall look to the earth as their mother

And they shall say, "It is she who supports us."

You said that we should always be thankful

For our earth and for each other

So it is that we are gathered here

We are your children, Lord of the Sky.



Now again the smoke rises

And again we offer prayers

You said that food should be placed beside us

And it should be ours in exchange for our labor.

You thought that ours should be a world

where green grass of many kinds should grow

You said that some should be medicines

And that one should be Ona'o

the sacred food, our sister corn

You gave to her two clinging sisters

beautiful Oa'geta, our sister beans

and bountiful Nyo'sowane, our sister squash

The three sacred sisters; they who sustain us.



This is what you thought, Lord of the Sky.

Thus did you think to provide for us

And you ordered that when the warm season comes,

That we should see the return of life

And remember you, and be thankful,

and gather here by the sacred fire.

So now again the smoke arises

We the people offer our prayers

We speak to you through the rising smoke

We are thankful, Lord of the Sky.



Take this and, as you should with all prayers, place it in a bunch of contexts - in yours, in the nation's, in Iraq's, on and on, praying that we know how to be thankful, praying that we know how to be thankful anymore.