PRACTICAL WISDOM FOR LEADING CONGREGATIONS
FAITH & LEADERSHIP
A learning resource for Christian leaders and their institutions from Leadership Education at Duke Divinity
Thanksgiving is a time to remember
She had no problem, though, requesting a fifth of brandy each November, to be added to the mysterious blend of ingredients that went into her mincemeat. The brandy made it all "work," she said, and her mincemeat pies -- "the baking gets rid of all the alcohol" -- were the stuff of legend in our family. They were absolutely essential to Thanksgiving; turkey was optional. Saint Peter now munches happily while those of us remaining in the church militant endure privation.
I was a student at Lebanon Valley College -- formerly EUB -- before I understood the historical importance of Grandma Ella's recipe. The poor English folk from whom she was descended seldom enjoyed meat in their diets; this was reserved for the upper classes. Mincemeat, then, was a means of transforming a small amount of beef of indeterminate quality -- think "The Cook's Tale" in Chaucer -- into a palatable form with a reasonable shelf life. The brandy was essential. EUB lifers at Lebanon Valley knew the story well.
Grandma Ella's mincemeat, then, was emblematic of our family's journey. It recalled a time when our ancestors had little, were an oppressed class, and struggled for survival. Had we understood all this as I was growing up, we could have cherished Grandma Cook's mincemeat as EUB matzo and narrated the family history as we enjoyed her pies, celebrating the exodus from poverty in England and the pilgrimage to plenty in America. We could have given appropriate thanks, recalling the place we used to be.
Thanksgiving encourages this nuanced celebration, though the contemporary American holiday veers to the side of conspicuous consumption without the reflection upon our origins. There is the requisite Thanksgiving Proclamation by the president; the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade, culminating in the appearance of Santa Claus; numerous football games, NFL and collegiate; and the eager anticipation of Black Friday, the day-after-Thanksgiving shopping melee that has been known to result in fatality. The Pilgrims who celebrated the first Thanksgiving in 1621, after a dreadful year of illness and hunger, would be appalled.
Central to United Methodist thinking about the sacraments is anamnesis, a Koine Greek term from the New Testament usually translated into English as “remember” or “remembrance.” When Jesus says, “Do this in remembrance of me,” instituting the Eucharist, the original text has anamnesis, both in Luke and in 1 Corinthians.
But anamnesis doesn’t mean merely to remember, in the sense of fondly recalling Grandma Cook’s mincemeat pies; instead, it means to make the power of a past event present in the now. When we come to the Lord’s Table, remembering in the New Testament sense, we encounter the power of Jesus’ death and resurrection. The Lord who meets us is the One who not only ate with the Twelve in the upper room before his passion but also broke the bread at Emmaus the day of his resurrection. It is one continuous narrative of salvation, the two breakings of bread being inseparable from one another.
Suppose we undertook to celebrate Thanksgiving by appropriating the New Testament sense of remembering. We would give thanks not only because of what we have but also because of where we used to be, and because of the time when we had not. This was the sense the Massachusetts Pilgrims brought to their table in the autumn of 1621, all 53 who had survived the first winter in New England.
They remembered not only the perilous voyage across the Atlantic in the Mayflower but also those who had died in the preceding months and were absent from the community table. They remembered where they had been, the friends and family who were now gone, and the hunger that had gnawed at them that first winter. All were interwoven at that thanksgiving meal, shared with Native Americans. Anamnesis created authentic thanks.
Pastors find this time of year especially challenging, not only because our cultural amnesia has made contemporary Thanksgiving a day of excess, the bounty quickly consumed so we can get on with the football, but also because Christmas creep -- Santa at the end of the Macy’s parade -- has robbed Thanksgiving Day of its solemnity and historic significance. It no longer stands alone but is brief prelude to the commercial cacophony that begins on Black Friday.
The church finds itself trying to sing the Lord’s song in a strange land. Perhaps by reminding folk of where we used to be -- among those who walked in darkness -- and of the time when we had not -- the poverty of spiritual hunger -- pastors might unleash the power of anamnesis in the church and enable the same authentic thanks that came to the table in Plymouth in 1621.
Read more from Edgar Moore »
I couldn't smell the roasted turkey. The aroma of sweet potato casserole and the buttery perfume of homemade cakes and pies filled the room but did not register with me.
It was the first Thanksgiving after I had brain surgery, and I wasn't feeling particularly thankful.
I was depressed over losing my sense of smell -- and the vision in one eye. A neurosurgeon had removed a benign tumor, and two months later, I was still broken and battered. I retreated to a corner. My mother's cheery and familiar face was the only bright spot that day.
Thanksgiving had been one of my favorite holidays. From childhood into early adulthood, I spent most Thanksgivings with my maternal grandparents in Lynchburg, Virginia.
The ritual started in the morning, when my grandfather, Papa, killed a hog. Later that day, the extended family would gather for turkey with all the trimmings: yeast rolls, stuffing, coconut pie and sweet potato casserole with marshmallows on top. It was a magical place and time.
My grandfather or uncles would say grace, expressing our deep feelings of gratitude for having each other, a roof over our heads and all the things we needed, plus some of the things we wanted. The table was a symbol of the bounty of my family. The house was warm. It was full of food. My relatives were there. Even as a child, I had recognized that I was blessed -- dressed in my black velvet skirt with matching hot pants and Shirley Temple curls.
But in 1999, I was filled with anger, mourning my losses. I was struggling to understand what had happened -- I had gone to the doctor on a Wednesday because I had a floater in my eye, and the following Monday I was having a 5 ½-hour surgery.
The neurosurgeon had warned me that the procedure would likely destroy my olfactory nerve, but at first I thought it had come through the surgery intact.
Then one day I burned a pot roast to a crisp. I ran outside to my garden and snipped off pieces of rosemary and lavender and inhaled. Nothing. I realized that another part of me was gone.
Losing vision in my right eye had been a total shock. Without peripheral vision, I often stumbled and fell. I needed more light in the house to see where I was going. Initially, I had a hard time reading.
My maternal grandmother died while I was recovering, and I couldn’t go to her funeral.
By November, I had not returned to work, and I wasn’t sure I’d ever write again. I was overwhelmed with loss, and even at Thanksgiving, I couldn’t regain the sense of gratitude I had had most of my life.
My minister, the late Rev. Lawrence Neale Jones, told me to ask God what he wanted me to do with one eye and without a sense of smell.
I was reminded of the biblical verse “We walk by faith, not by sight” (2 Corinthians 5:7). I knew I needed to keep putting one foot in front of the other, not sure where I was going but trusting God to lead me.
I slowly began to reconcile my body with my spirit. On the one hand, I understood that we are embodied spirits, encased by a physical vessel. Yet I knew that my spirit was more than my physicality.
I had to remind myself that the lumps and dents left from the surgery would never go away. But that doesn’t mean my spirit couldn’t thrive again.
As a Christian, I believe that faith turns adversity into advantage. Through faith, we realize we are not relegated to what we can see, feel and touch. Our faith creates a whole new point of reference.
All my needs were being met through the generosity of family and friends. Sometimes I dreamed that at the end of my life, God would restore sight in my right eye only to make me see that it didn’t matter -- that the person I am was far greater than my deficits.
For a long time, I prayed for God to restore my sight and my sense of smell. Eventually, I realized that even though that would not happen, I would still be healed.
Thanksgiving is about celebrating what you have, not grieving what you have lost. It’s not just about the food; it’s about family and gratitude and all kinds of bounty. Being thankful requires letting go of the things we can’t control and accepting and embracing the rest.
So as another Thanksgiving approaches, I am grateful for the past, thankful for the present and hopeful for the future. Since that Thanksgiving in 1999, I have grown to accept my losses. But I appreciate that I can still taste, and I savor the wonderful meals that I share with family and friends.
I can’t wait to sit at the Thanksgiving table once again. I know I will be transported to my grandparents’ house. I keep thinking about the velvet outfit and Shirley Temple curls. That little girl -- deeply grateful -- plans to make an appearance again this year. And she’s going to relish every bite.
Read more from Bridgette A. Lacy »
But anamnesis doesn’t mean merely to remember, in the sense of fondly recalling Grandma Cook’s mincemeat pies; instead, it means to make the power of a past event present in the now. When we come to the Lord’s Table, remembering in the New Testament sense, we encounter the power of Jesus’ death and resurrection. The Lord who meets us is the One who not only ate with the Twelve in the upper room before his passion but also broke the bread at Emmaus the day of his resurrection. It is one continuous narrative of salvation, the two breakings of bread being inseparable from one another.
Suppose we undertook to celebrate Thanksgiving by appropriating the New Testament sense of remembering. We would give thanks not only because of what we have but also because of where we used to be, and because of the time when we had not. This was the sense the Massachusetts Pilgrims brought to their table in the autumn of 1621, all 53 who had survived the first winter in New England.
They remembered not only the perilous voyage across the Atlantic in the Mayflower but also those who had died in the preceding months and were absent from the community table. They remembered where they had been, the friends and family who were now gone, and the hunger that had gnawed at them that first winter. All were interwoven at that thanksgiving meal, shared with Native Americans. Anamnesis created authentic thanks.
Pastors find this time of year especially challenging, not only because our cultural amnesia has made contemporary Thanksgiving a day of excess, the bounty quickly consumed so we can get on with the football, but also because Christmas creep -- Santa at the end of the Macy’s parade -- has robbed Thanksgiving Day of its solemnity and historic significance. It no longer stands alone but is brief prelude to the commercial cacophony that begins on Black Friday.
The church finds itself trying to sing the Lord’s song in a strange land. Perhaps by reminding folk of where we used to be -- among those who walked in darkness -- and of the time when we had not -- the poverty of spiritual hunger -- pastors might unleash the power of anamnesis in the church and enable the same authentic thanks that came to the table in Plymouth in 1621.
Read more from Edgar Moore »
FAITH & LEADERSHIP
A learning resource for Christian leaders and their institutions from Leadership Education at Duke Divinity
Bridgette A. Lacy: Giving thanks in a difficult season
Bigstock / Rawpixel.com
Enjoying the Thanksgiving meal was impossible for a writer recovering from brain surgery. But she has come to appreciate that Thanksgiving is about celebrating what you have, not grieving what you have lost.
The table was set with the good china. Platters of fried chicken and bowls of greens and vegetables lined the table. I was sitting at the big feast with my extended family. But I barely filled my plate on that warm Thanksgiving Day in 1999.I couldn't smell the roasted turkey. The aroma of sweet potato casserole and the buttery perfume of homemade cakes and pies filled the room but did not register with me.
It was the first Thanksgiving after I had brain surgery, and I wasn't feeling particularly thankful.
I was depressed over losing my sense of smell -- and the vision in one eye. A neurosurgeon had removed a benign tumor, and two months later, I was still broken and battered. I retreated to a corner. My mother's cheery and familiar face was the only bright spot that day.
Thanksgiving had been one of my favorite holidays. From childhood into early adulthood, I spent most Thanksgivings with my maternal grandparents in Lynchburg, Virginia.
The ritual started in the morning, when my grandfather, Papa, killed a hog. Later that day, the extended family would gather for turkey with all the trimmings: yeast rolls, stuffing, coconut pie and sweet potato casserole with marshmallows on top. It was a magical place and time.
My grandfather or uncles would say grace, expressing our deep feelings of gratitude for having each other, a roof over our heads and all the things we needed, plus some of the things we wanted. The table was a symbol of the bounty of my family. The house was warm. It was full of food. My relatives were there. Even as a child, I had recognized that I was blessed -- dressed in my black velvet skirt with matching hot pants and Shirley Temple curls.
But in 1999, I was filled with anger, mourning my losses. I was struggling to understand what had happened -- I had gone to the doctor on a Wednesday because I had a floater in my eye, and the following Monday I was having a 5 ½-hour surgery.
The neurosurgeon had warned me that the procedure would likely destroy my olfactory nerve, but at first I thought it had come through the surgery intact.
Then one day I burned a pot roast to a crisp. I ran outside to my garden and snipped off pieces of rosemary and lavender and inhaled. Nothing. I realized that another part of me was gone.
Losing vision in my right eye had been a total shock. Without peripheral vision, I often stumbled and fell. I needed more light in the house to see where I was going. Initially, I had a hard time reading.
My maternal grandmother died while I was recovering, and I couldn’t go to her funeral.
By November, I had not returned to work, and I wasn’t sure I’d ever write again. I was overwhelmed with loss, and even at Thanksgiving, I couldn’t regain the sense of gratitude I had had most of my life.
My minister, the late Rev. Lawrence Neale Jones, told me to ask God what he wanted me to do with one eye and without a sense of smell.
I was reminded of the biblical verse “We walk by faith, not by sight” (2 Corinthians 5:7). I knew I needed to keep putting one foot in front of the other, not sure where I was going but trusting God to lead me.
I slowly began to reconcile my body with my spirit. On the one hand, I understood that we are embodied spirits, encased by a physical vessel. Yet I knew that my spirit was more than my physicality.
I had to remind myself that the lumps and dents left from the surgery would never go away. But that doesn’t mean my spirit couldn’t thrive again.
As a Christian, I believe that faith turns adversity into advantage. Through faith, we realize we are not relegated to what we can see, feel and touch. Our faith creates a whole new point of reference.
All my needs were being met through the generosity of family and friends. Sometimes I dreamed that at the end of my life, God would restore sight in my right eye only to make me see that it didn’t matter -- that the person I am was far greater than my deficits.
For a long time, I prayed for God to restore my sight and my sense of smell. Eventually, I realized that even though that would not happen, I would still be healed.
Thanksgiving is about celebrating what you have, not grieving what you have lost. It’s not just about the food; it’s about family and gratitude and all kinds of bounty. Being thankful requires letting go of the things we can’t control and accepting and embracing the rest.
So as another Thanksgiving approaches, I am grateful for the past, thankful for the present and hopeful for the future. Since that Thanksgiving in 1999, I have grown to accept my losses. But I appreciate that I can still taste, and I savor the wonderful meals that I share with family and friends.
I can’t wait to sit at the Thanksgiving table once again. I know I will be transported to my grandparents’ house. I keep thinking about the velvet outfit and Shirley Temple curls. That little girl -- deeply grateful -- plans to make an appearance again this year. And she’s going to relish every bite.
Read more from Bridgette A. Lacy »
FAITH & LEADERSHIP
A learning resource for Christian leaders and their institutions from Leadership Education at Duke Divinity
Brian Volck: More than enough
In a land of easy consumption, Thanksgiving meals remind us of our vulnerability and interdependence.
"It's not Thanksgiving without Aunt Mary's stuffing," one of them said, and he was right to crave its moist goodness and refuse all substitutes. It really was that delicious.
I was as much a fan of my aunt's Middle Eastern dishes -- my mother's younger sister married a doctor from Palestine, by way of Lebanon -- and later learned to cook some of them on my own.
My memories of childhood Thanksgivings are of large families gathered at candlelit tables laden with food, the heady scent of cumin, nutmeg and cardamom, the clink of plates being filled, the feel of hot, dark turkey meat on the tongue, and familiar tastes that refuse to be captured in words.
I linger in these memories, savoring them as they burst in my awareness like pomegranate seeds crunched between my teeth.
These meals were -- and are -- true moments of thanksgiving, because they remind us of our vulnerability and interdependence. A land of easy consumption both breeds and thrives on forgetfulness, a failure to remember that there are precious few things we, as humans, absolutely need.
Among these, of course, is food, without which we wither and die. Elaborate or simple, gourmet or plain, meals are declarations that we are never entire to ourselves. We are, rather, final beneficiaries in a long chain of gift giving.
We are needy creatures, and after existence itself, the most astonishing miracle is that, while our most basic needs might not be met in the world, they are so often met in abundance.
What we eat arrives from somewhere, comes from someone -- a few better-compensated for their work than many others -- each place and person along the way just one step in an elaborate dance of cooperation between labor and grace.
When Christians celebrate the Lord’s Supper, or Eucharist -- the word in Greek means “thanksgiving” -- the words of the ritual meal remind the body’s gathered members of this cooperative dance.
For example, the words a Roman Catholic priest speaks after the bread is brought to the altar are “Blessed are you, Lord, God of all creation. Through your goodness we have this bread to offer, which earth has given and human hands have made. It will become for us the bread of life.” To which the people respond, “Blessed be God forever.”
This recalls the blessing called upon the unleavened bread in the Jewish Seder: “Baruch atah Adonai Eloheinu Melech ha-olam, borei pri ha-adamah,” which means “Praised are you, Lord our God, King of the universe, who creates the fruit of the ground/land/earth.”
The symbolic center of such rituals recalls that our first and chief gratitude is to the Creator who makes us and all we love and need, and yet neither Eucharist nor salvation is exclusively a matter between the individual and God. We are saved as a gathered people, and we gather to thank God in a meal where the most God-smitten mystic still takes time to thank the cook.
Both Eucharist and Seder are meals of re-membering, of calling together a body before God and calling to mind God’s gracious gifts. In the Seder, at which the Jewish people remember Israel’s liberation from captivity in Egypt, those gathered sing a song named for its refrain, “Dayenu,” meaning, “It would have been enough.” Each stanza recalls a miracle or divine gift, such as splitting the sea or setting aside the Sabbath, to which the people say, “Dayenu!” Any one of these would have been sufficient in itself, but God -- whose love and grace know no bounds -- grants far more.
At Thanksgiving, it would be enough merely to have food, but God grants more, for food can in fact be tasty. Taste is an extravagant sense. While there’s advantage in a species preferring certain flavors (sweet or salty, for instance) to others, it needn’t be the case that well-prepared food gives such delight. We do, however, savor delicious meals, buy cookbooks, trade recipes and set aside at least one room in our homes in which to prepare food and eat it.
What’s more, our tables usually have room for guests, and meals are occasions for companionship (from the words “together” and “bread”) and conviviality (“together” and “life”). One can eat in solitude, of course, and much in contemporary American culture encourages us to eat quickly and alone, often substituting quantity for quality, but that’s no way to celebrate.
Jesus made a point of dining with friends, from two to 5,000, depending on the occasion. The next time you read the Gospel of Luke, pay attention to the meals, where hearts are opened and lives remade.
To dine together is not only to make our bodily dependence visible but to revel in and share it, announcing without shame that, in the words of Miroslav Volf, “vulnerability is the essential condition of human life.”
In my memory, I am at a long, candlelit table, my cousins passing plates of Lebanese rice, hot turkey meat and my mother’s dressing. Everyone is talking, smiling, eating. Our prayers have called us to thanks, and if we are insufficiently aware of the hidden labor that affords us this bounty, we are conscious that someone we love cooked this food for us.
Where is there an end to the things for which we are rightly thankful? If God had merely created us, it would have been enough. If God had answered our bodily needs, it would have been enough. If God had made the world delicious, it would have been enough. If God had called us to dine together, it would have been enough. If God had called us to share our bounty, it would have been enough. If God had asked for nothing in return but love and gratitude, it would have been enough.
But God gives more, and more, and still more, and the best we can do is say thanks.
Read more from Brian Volck »
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Alban at Duke Divinity School
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