Thanksgiving Gratitude

By Flavia Mangan Colgan
Correspondent

“It is a serious thing just to be alive on this fresh morning in this broken world.”  The best prayer I can ever offer is to simply say thank you. In that way, Thanksgiving has always been such a powerful time for me, as it celebrates gratitude, sharing, and togetherness.

It’s an opportune time to refocus our attention on what we can be grateful for and what we can give. Gratitude can turn any day into Thanksgiving, and in this way Thanksgiving can and should be perpetual. I give thanks for small and big things alike. Thankful for all the beauty of nature that abounds all around us. Grateful for the peace, joy, and laughter that family (given, chosen, and four-legged) bring into our lives. Grateful for the love that springs from within. Grateful for the doors that closed and the people who left, life was offering me more, I just had to accept it. It is a time to focus on what we do have, instead of what we do not.

Now let’s talk food—yum! A Thanksgiving feast is the stuff food dreams are made of and if we can’t all agree on delicious homemade food shared with friends and family, what can we agree on? Grateful for togetherness, in whatever form that takes.

I am also acutely aware that Thanksgiving for many Indigenous Peoples is a day of mourning, a reminder of all that was taken, and I acknowledge that and use this time also to reflect on what more I can do to protest the racism that still exists today. As we think of all that we can be thankful for, may we share that in words, but more importantly share that in how we live our lives, during this season and always.

As the poet Rumi instructs, let us use gratitude like a cloak and it will feed every corner of life.