Thanksgiving
Gratitude
It being Thanksgiving, I’m doing some reading about gratitude. Just read through part of Norman Wirzba’s Living the Sabbath: Discovering the Rhythms of Rest and Delight. Chapter 1 has a section on food - very apropos for Americans this week - and in particular on the production of food.
Wirzba’s contention, one that strikes me as probably right, is that the way we produce meat is violent and alienating, and that our willingness to accept food that comes to us this way is symptomatic of a culture that is more motivated by fear than by gratitude.
This could turn into a rant about locavorism, but I don’t want to go there right now. My point - and Wirzba’s, I think - is not that we need to change our food production, but that we need to ask ourselves why we produce food as we do. And that we ought to ask ourselves if we - and our world - wouldn’t be better off if we received what we have with gratitude. I find this very difficult, but I’m going to give it a try.
Reading the Holidays
This practice of reading the holidays began for me about ten years ago on July 4th. I decided then that I'd re-read the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution. I was guessing that it had been so long since I'd read them, I'd probably forgotten much of what they say. My experiment proved my guess to be right.
I was struck, as I read them, just how remarkable these documents are. Since then, I've repeated this almost every year. Each time I re-read these documents, I find them moving. They're beautifully written, and they strive for things that are, in my estimation, praiseworthy.
I've begun to add other readings for other holidays as well. On MLK, Jr. Day, (and sometimes on April 4, the anniversary of his death) I listen to his "I Have A Dream" speech or read his "Letter from a Birmingham Jail." I admit it: both of these regularly make me cry.
Of course, I also read the appointed Scriptures for Christmas, Easter, and Pentecost, and for some other feast days as well. But here I'm interested in those holidays that are not holy-days but secular feasts. How about you? Do you have readings you associate with such holidays? What do you recommend?
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* (If you're interested, you can see my article on Puritanism by clicking here and searching for pp 631-632)