Sermon copyright (c) 2024 Dan Harper. As delivered to First Parish in Cohasset. The sermon as delivered contained substantial improvisation. The text below may have typographical errors, missing words, etc., because I didn’t have time to make corrections.
Readings
The first reading was from an interview: poet Ross Gay was interviewed by Barnes and Noble on the publication of his recent collection of essays titled “The Book of More Delights.”
[Interviewer:] How do you maintain an appreciative mindset even in the harder moments of life?
[Ross Gay:] I’m glad you used the world optimistic because I’m not. Nor am I pessimistic. I am cultivating the practice, and the ability, to describe things that I see. So when I see a guy in terrible shape stopped mid-stride and folded over on Market Street in Philadelphia in what I imagine was some kind of opioid stupor, and see a woman standing next to him for five minutes — five actual minutes — holding a five dollar bill out to him, waiting from him to emerge from wherever he went, I’m just describing what I’m seeing: profound suffering and profound care right next to each other. It’s not a proclivity or a bent, it’s just a description.
The second reading was from the poem “Play” by William Carlos Williams
Subtle, clever brain, wiser than I am,
By what devious means do you contrive
To remain idle? Teach me, O Master.
Sermon: “Giving Thanks”
We Unitarian Universalists are notorious for our use of reason in religion. We like to think about things. We like to doubt things. When someone talks about a religious belief, we ask ourselves: Does this religious belief sound reasonable? Does it conform to the rules of logic and reason? When someone talks about a religious narrative or myth, we ask the same questions: Does this myth sound reasonable? Does this myth conform to the rules of logic and reason?
This attitude can get us into trouble. We get used to arguing among ourselves, questioning each other about religious beliefs and religious myths. Then when we talk to others who are not Unitarian Universalists, we may find ourselves arguing with someone’s deeply held and very personal religious belief or myth, and unintentionally causing offense. Sometimes our use of reason can get in the way of our commitment to religious tolerance.
So with that in mind, I’d like to take a quick look at the myth of Thanksgiving, one of the core myths of the United States of America. Since we’re Unitarian Universalists, of course we’re going to doubt some key aspects of this myth. But instead of just doubting some of the details of the old story of the Pilgrims and the Wampanoag, I’m going to suggest a different interpretation of Thanksgiving, one which might serve to unite us rather than divide us.
And the sad truth is that our current founding myth of Thanksgiving — that old story of the Pilgrims and the Wampanoag sharing a harvest feast together — has become increasingly divisive. Since the 1970s, many of our Wampanoag neighbors here in southeastern Massachusetts have renamed Thanksgiving as the “Day of Mourning.” As a result, some people from other ethnic groups (that is, people who aren’t Native Americans) have come to feel uncomfortable about celebrating Thanksgiving. Not surprisingly, given how polarized our society has become, people on all sides of this debate have both given and taken offense.
My feeling is that if you like the traditional myth of Thanksgiving, that old story of Thanksgiving that we heard during the Moment for All Ages, go ahead and use that myth as you celebrate the Thanksgiving holiday; continue to tell the old story of the Pilgrims and the Wampanoag Indians. At the same time, if you’re the typical doubting Unitarian Universalist, you’ll continue to ask questions about that myth, just as we did in the Moment for All Ages.
For example, we Unitarian Universalists will want to ask, “Where were all the women in that first Thanksgiving?” Sixty years ago, when I was very young, the women mostly got left out of the Thanksgiving story. But we like to include the women. For example, we look at Thanksgiving from the women’s point of view and point out that there were only four Pilgrim women old enough to help with the cooking. And no Wampanoag women whatsoever attended that first Thanksgiving.
In another example, we like to remember that not all the Europeans were actually Pilgrims. The Pilgrims were part of a specific religious community, perhaps more accurately called “Separatists.” Not all the English settlers were part of that religious group. Of the 102 passengers on the Mayflower, about half were Separatists. About thirty of them were other people who had been recruited by the “London Merchant Adventurers” company. Myles Standish is the most famous member of this group; he was not a Separatist, though he was an integral part of the colony. About twenty of the people on the Mayflower were indentured servants, many of them under the age of twenty. On top of that, a few of the crewmembers of the Mayflower decided to stay on with the colony. So we like to increase the accuracy of the old story of Thanksgiving by saying that both Separatists and other English settlers ate dinner with the Wampanoag Indians.
We also like to point out that descendants of both the English and the Wampanoags still live in the area. In other words, this old story lives on in actual flesh-and-blood people whom we might meet in our daily lives. I know a couple of people who are of Wampanoag descent, whose ancestors were part of the old story of Thanksgiving. And I know a few people who trace their ancestry back to the Mayflower passengers; I may even be one of them — Uncle Bob, our family genealogist, was pretty sure my mother was a Mayflower descendant. And not everyone who claims descent from those original participants feels the same way about that old myth: some embrace the myth; some disdain the myth; and some just aren’t all that interested.
I’m one of the ones who have become less and less interested in the old myth of Thanksgiving. I’d like to tell you why, and that will led me into talking about that other, even older, story about Thanksgiving which might serve to unite us rather than divide us.
I feel that by spending so much time talking about Pilgrims and Indians, we tend to obscure deeper truths about the holiday of Thanksgiving. The holiday of Thanksgiving is really all about giving thanks. We can trace its origins back to the age-old human tradition of communities gathering together to give thanks. We can also trace its origins back to the age-old tradition of humans holding harvest festivals. Indeed, the English settlers in 1621 would have called their celebration a harvest festival. The Wampanoag had their own harvest festivals, and when they chanced upon that English harvest festival in 1621 would have understood what was going on.
Contemporary Wampanoag continue to celebrate harvest festivals. In fact, they celebrate frequent harvest celebrations, from the first harvest of strawberries in the spring, to late harvests such as cranberries. Interviewed by the National Museum of the American Indian, Gertrude Hendricks, a Mashpee Wampanaog, pointed out: “A lot of our [Wampanoag] festivals are called ‘thanksgivings,’ because we’re giving thanks for the best of the season. It’s really important to do that … to keep the tradition going, [because] a lot of people just think of thanksgiving as the one day all year when we give thanks for the bounties from the earth. But we do it daily.”
The Pilgrims of 1621 would have understood Gertrude Hendricks’ point that thanks should be given daily. For the Pilgrims did give thanks daily: they would have said grace before meals, a religious ritual of offering thanks to their god for the food that they were about to eat. And in addition to giving thanks daily, they also gave thanks in special celebrations, like harvest festivals. So when we think about that autumn day in 1621, the most important thing to remember is that the English settlers and the Wampanoag Indians people were giving thanks.
Today, we live in a world that’s dominated by bad news: political division, social unrest, ecological disaster, and so on. Many of us get obsessed by the bad news. We can get so obsessed with the bad news that we can neglect to give thanks for all that is good in our lives. This is where we supposedly advanced modern people could learn from the example of both the English settlers in Plymouth, and from the Wampanoag Indians. Both those peoples had far more bad news than good news in their lives, yet they remembered to give thanks.
Remember that more than half the English settlers died in that first year. Remember that the Pilgrims among the English had been hounded out of England, and then felt they had to leave Holland. Their lives had been filled with uncertainty and fear and grief for years. Yet they took the time to stop and give thanks for what they did have.
As for the Wampanoag, their lives were even more uncertain. From 1616 to 1619, an unknown disease killed as many as 90 percent of the people in many of their villages; yet that epidemic did not affect their traditional enemies, the Narragansett Indians, who lived just to the west. Not only were the Wampanoag grieving the loss of family members and friends — a grief so profound and overwhelming I don’t think we can even even imagine it — but they lived in fear of being invaded at any moment by the Narragansett. Yet they took the time to stop and give thanks for what they did have.
These were both peoples who gave thanks even in the face of overwhelming adversity. They gave thanks despite all had gone wrong. They did not ignore the troubled side of life, but they gave thanks anyway.
We could do the same. Ross Gay’s long poem “Catalogue of Unabashed Gratitude” shows us how we might learn to give thanks more often. Ross Gay does not shy away from the difficult side of life, and yet he still gives thanks. So, for example, he writes:
…and thank you
for not taking my pal when the engine
of his mind dragged him
to swig fistfuls of Xanax and a bottle or two of booze,
and thank you for taking my father
a few years after his own father went down thank you
mercy, mercy, thank you
for not smoking meth with your mother…
And Ross Gay also gives thanks for little trivial moments in life, that may not seem at first to be worthy of thanks — but which are worthy of thanks. So, for example, he writes:
thank you the cockeyed [basketball] court
on which in a half-court 3 vs. 3 we oldheads
made of some runny-nosed kids
a shambles, and the 61-year-old
after flipping a reverse layup off a back door cut
from my no-look pass to seal the game
ripped off his shirt and threw punches at the gods
and hollered at the kids to admire the pacemaker’s scar
grinning across his chest…
As a Black man living in America, Ross Gay has also written poems about injustice and his rage at injustice. Yet he knows that giving thanks is essential to our beings. In spite of all the bad things in the world, he does not forget to give thanks.
May we too remember to give thanks. Yes, there is the sadness and injustice and trouble in this world. But there is also much to be thankful for. Yes, we must try to make the world a better place. But we can also give thanks for all that is good.
May we remember to give thanks, not just on one day of the year, but every day. Giving thanks for all that is good should be one of our central spiritual practices. When we arise in the morning, we can offer thanks for all that is given to us. When we eat, we can give thanks for whatever it is that brings forth bread from the earth. We can give thanks when we see and hear and smell the wonders of the natural world.
This is the deeper message of the Thanksgiving holiday: that we should give thanks, not just on one day, but every day.