Malaise and Thankfulness

I’ve been away for a while. Deadlines and duties have kept me snared. Also, quite honestly, I have found so much of the news depressing of late. It feels like another time of “malaise”, and I have found it hard to write.

In my first draft, I started giving examples of why I think that, but I have rejected it. Instead, I want to focus on tomorrow.

Thanksgiving is a day in which, if the tradition is at all true, people of different faiths and visions came together in a common celebration. Those moments of common celebration don’t always triumph, and there are those who fear more than one faith sharing it today. But it is our ability to remember and reinvent and try however fumblingly to make a City on the Hill that glows with the best that is in us that has saved us from dark times in the past, that has made the turning away from tyrannies of slavery and bigotry possible, and that I hope will make us again not a nation that celebrates its willingness to torture but it’s willingness to better itself, collectively and one-by-one.

So in my own way, Let Me Give Thanks:

For my family and my friends,
For my wife who keeps me rooted to the ground,
For my career and my colleagues and the joy of teaching,
For the challenging student who first seems to be a pain but who later becomes an inspiration,
For the source of tomorrow’s feast, the animals themselves, the plants, the farmers, the migrant and native-born Wisconsinites who work at the nearby Turkey Store,
For everyone whose labors have eased my life.

Let me be thankful for the chaotic history of this nation that can still be a beacon and still rouse us from malaise to aspiration,
and finally,
Let me give thanks for those who challenge my thinking and force me to grow (even if I do grouse about it).

May this be a time when all of us find something in our lives, no matter how small and fleeting, for which we are truly thankful.