And now, on the day after

Friday, November 24, 2023

Memorial of Saint Andrew Dung-Lac, Priest, and Companions, Martyrs

(click here to listen to or read today’s scriptures)

And now, on the day after

All day we cooked and ate, along with family in Austin and friends from Kazakhstan, who celebrate their one year anniversary in America next month. We spoke of our gratitudes and ate our M&M’s. Jasper sat one everyone’s lap and looked everywhere for uneaten M&M’s.

Andi, master party planner, got us all (8 adults, 3 kids) involved over and over. She was flexible when she needed to be, and firm when flexible wouldn’t work (which was hardly ever). I took a nap, Machiko worked in the yard, Jasper slept awhile with Andi, it was quiet and then it was loud, and everyone was happy.

Miles wrote a thank-you card to someone. “How do you spell equations,” he asked. Turns out the card was to his dad. Miles beat his Grandma Machiko, who represented the rest of us grandparents, pushing a sweet potato from one end of the room to the other with a spoon. Can’t use your hands! Jasper excelled at Thanksgiving Charades, once his mom read the card to him. Three of the Tomitas went across the street to feed the fish for their vacationing friends.

Now that our enemies have been crushed, let us go up to purify the sanctuary and rededicate it. All the people adored and praised heaven, flat on their faces, and then for eight days they celebrated the dedication of the altar. Joyfully they offered burnt offerings and sacrifices of deliverance and praise and decreed that this celebration should be observed with joy and gladness every year thereafter.

And today we call these eight days Hanukkah, which sometimes begins on December 14 (as did the first one).

You have dominion over all, in your hand are power and might; it is yours to give grandeur and strength to all. We praise your glorious name.

Thanksgiving comes but once a year, but gratitude reigns in all our hearts every day. Or it could, if we stopped trying to be in charge of so much stuff. Before the kiddos went to bed we watched A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving, first aired in 1973 but more ridiculously relevant now than ever. Every character contributed to the chaos, and then to the more or less peaceful conclusion.

I know many of us spent Thanksgiving alone. No party planner around, and not nearly as much to eat. Billy Collins, former Poet Laureate of the United States, spent at least one Thanksgiving on his own:

As If To Demonstrate An Eclipse

by Billy Collins

 I pick an orange from a wicker basket

and place it on the table

to represent the sun.

Then down at the other end

a blue and white marble

becomes the earth

and nearby I lay the little moon of an aspirin.

 

I get a glass from a cabinet,

open a bottle of wine,

then I sit in a ladder-back chair,

a benevolent god presiding

over a miniature creation myth,

 

and I begin to sing

a homemade canticle of thanks

for this perfect little arrangement,

for not making the earth too hot or cold

not making it spin too fast or slow

 

so that the grove of orange trees

and the owl become possible,

not to mention the rolling wave,

the play of clouds, geese in flight,

and the Z of lightning on a dark lake.

 

Then I fill my glass again

and give thanks for the trout,

the oak, and the yellow feather,

 

singing the room full of shadows,

as sun and earth and moon

circle one another in their impeccable orbits

and I get more and more cockeyed with gratitude.

(1 Maccabees 4, 1 Chronicles 29, John 10, Luke 19)

(posted at www.davesandel.net)

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