In this Issue:

All Saints Village: Executive Council endorses further exploration of concept

Blessing of teddy bears during Bishop's visit and Children's sabath

Part of the Heart of our Mission: News and pictures form around the diocese

Mission in Mississippi: Diocesan Team Works at 10 Locations in Pascagoula

From the National Front

From the Anglican World

2006 Diocesan Convention

Commentaries

From the Bishop: Thankful for how much we have

Reflection: Saints of the address book

X-ercizing: Community, solidarity and humanity (Part 2)

Diocesan Calendar

Past Issues

From the Bishop: Thankful for how much we have

I once tool a group of teenagers from my parish to New York City for a mission trip. We worked at a soup kitchen in an Episcopal church serving lunch to 1,000 people from the streets each day. I spent time talking to the group before we went back home. I wanted them to process what they had experienced. I wanted them to be prepared to go home to their families who had not seen and heard what their children had. And so we talked. We talked about what had happened to them and what they had learned. I will never forget what one girl in particular had learned. “I’ve learned,” she said, “to be more thankful for all the things I have.”

On one level it sounds so right. On another, though, it seems to me that something is terribly wrong — not with her but with the fact that something about what she said sounds so right to me. Is my gratitude to God so dependent on “all the things I have?” Is my life dependent on “all the things I have?” Is who I am dependent on “all the things I have?” Is that what this holiday of Thanksgiving is all about, to say nothing of the weekly celebration of thanksgiving (which is, after all, what the Greek work “eucharist” means) all about?

What I have found so disturbing about my young parishioner’s reflection on her week of serving the poor was not that it said something about her. After all, she was only 16. It is what it said about me. The spiritual question is whether I have the courage to face it or whether I will take the easy way out, protest that it isn’t so, and go about living my life the same old way. Thanksgiving can either confirm us in the way things are, the way of thankfulness for how much we have, or challenge us to live in a new way, maybe a Gospel way.

If our thankfulness is tied to what we have, we are standing on very thin ice. This fall, if nothing else, should have taught us that. Just this month, some people on the other side of our own state lost everything in an instant to a tornado. And then there is Katrina. Thousands and thousands of people lost all the things they might have been thankful for last Thanksgiving. Conventional wisdom, and indeed conventional faith, would have said they had much to be thankful for. It is not so true this year. Is thankfulness a factor of “how much we have?”

The spiritual danger that assaults our souls is in that very question. The irony is how very little we pay attention to it. The greater irony is that we have an entire holiday the purpose of which has so much been lost that it may now serve to harm our souls more than it helps them. That first Thanksgiving, I imagine, was not about giving thanks for how much the Pilgrims had. Indeed, they had less than they did the year before in England. It has got to be about something more.

The place we go so wrong is in resting our thankfulness in the phrase “how much we have.” Now the first part says something about God’s abundance. Indeed, there is much. Even with a growing population, the resources of the earth are sufficient in God’s providence to provide for all of us. The problem is that they do not. And I can’t help but think that the second part of the phrase is why, even with all that this planet is blessed with, still people do not have enough, children starve, diseases that are curable take lives without reason, and for that matter relief supplies have trouble getting where they need to go. The problem is in the “we have” part.

The subject of “how much” is God. The subject of “we have” is us. Which is it we’re thankful for? Are we thankful for what God has given? Or, if we’re honest, are we thankful for how much of what God has given we have been able to possess? And if we’ve been really good at possessing a lot of what God has provided, are we convinced that somehow that shows God’s special favor to us? God’s graciousness includes all. Our possession excludes all but ourselves, unless that is, we make a very conscious decision about what we possess. Is it God’s provision that we’re thankful for or is it our skill in possessing for ourselves what God has given to all that we will give thanks for this Thanksgiving?

Perhaps that is something Scripture has something to say about even though we are so fond of concentrating on other parts of it that might be more threatening to others than they are to us. Luke 12:13-21 comes to mind. Even more frighteningly, and perhaps to the point, so does Luke 16:19-31.
Thanksgiving is in danger of becoming less about God’s abundance and providence and more about “we have,” our possession of what God has provided. The culture we live in says that our happiness is in what we have, in what we possess. Is that what we Christians say? Do we stand enough apart from our culture to proclaim a different message, a better message? Can we see the Good News of another way?

Is our thankfulness for how much or is it for we have? And do we have the courage to answer that question honestly?

Agape,

Advocate Online Staff:

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