We bring today our joyful Thanksgiving for all the increase that the fertile earth has yielded. . . . We remember all those who plow the fields and sow the seed, who cultivate the rows of growing herbs and cultivate the harvest. We would be mindful of the mutual dependence of all the members of the family of (humanity) and would take a useful part in the world’s life. May we never be satisfied to enjoy plenty so long as any are in want. May we express our gratitude for nature’s gifts not in words alone, but also in the purposes for which we live and in the kindliness of our deeds. (Vincent Silliman, UU minister )

Song #54 Now Light is Less (Words by poet Theodore Roethke, hymn tune Sursum Corda composed by Alfred Morton Smith, both in the 20th c.)

Harvest, pt 1

What will you do this Thanksgiving? What makes Thanksgiving special for you?

The Best Meal (In Tapestry of Faith, www.uua.org. Inspired by a story in Tales for the Seventh Day: A Collection of Sabbath Stories by Nina Jaffe, New York: Scholastic Press, 2000). Once a there was a great chef who was famous throughout the land. She was so good she taught other people how to cook and their food was almost as tasty as hers. Just for fun, she would throw fancy dinner parties once a month. Everyone wanted to be invited to these dinners. For these dinners, she would instruct the student chefs to cook new and extravagant dishes. The dinner guests, in awe of the chef’s skills, would spend the dinner savoring each bite. All you would hear would be quiet little “ooohs” and “aaahs”. Because she wanted to always feature new goodies to eat at all her parties, she would travel far and wide all over the land to experience new food. Everywhere she went, the town would honor her. The best cooks would create dishes unique to their region. The great chef tasted them all and requested the recipes of the dishes she liked best. As you can imagine, she ate a lot of food and knew a great deal about how to prepare the best meals.

One evening, while traveling home, the chef stopped at a small country house to ask for directions to a hotel. The family insisted that she spend the night with them. Happily, she was in time for dinner. The mother took a casserole out of the oven. Brother tossed a salad with different vegetables. Sister sliced the bread. “Let me help”, said the chef, so she set the table for the four of them. When everyone was seated at the table, the family held hands. The chef felt the young sister’s hand slip into hers and the chef, in turn, reached out for the brother’s hand. The mother said, “To have food upon the table” and the children replied “Is a blessing!” The mother said “The sunset and the possibility of another sunrise tomorrow…”. “Is a blessing!” the children replied. “The love of family, the warmth of friendship, and the grace of the Spirit…” “Is a blessing!” the children and chef replied together. Then they laughed, happy that the chef had joined in their grace.

They ate and during the meal everyone told stories about their day. The chef could not believe how delicious the food was. She didn’t want dinner to end. All things must end, however, and off to bed the children went. “May I have the recipes?” the chef asked the mother, who was flattered that the chef had so enjoyed their simple meal.

In the morning, the chef rode on toward home. When she got home, she went straight to the kitchen, gave the young chefs the recipes, and told them to start preparation for a dinner party tomorrow night. Tomorrow came, the guests arrived, and the casserole, salad, and bread were served. The chef took a bite and chewed. Something was wrong. Something was missing. This was not like the meal she had at the farmhouse. She ordered the students to explain what they had done differently, but they promised they had only followed the recipes. So she sent someone to go to the farmhouse to bring the mother to her house. The mother came and the chef asked her what missing ingredient had she left out of the recipe. “What’s missing cannot fit into a recipe,” she replied. “Did you and your guests make the meal together? Did you hold fast to each other while giving thanks? Did you share your stories during the meal?” “No,” the chef replied. None of that had happened. Then the chef realized that sharing a meal together – what we call “breaking bread together” – was about more than just eating good food. It was about working together, sharing lives, and sharing laughs. It was about being thankful for the food not because it was fancy or the best, but because being together to enjoy the food would nourish you, your family, and your friends. After that, the chef decided to give small, intimate dinner parties. She and her guests would work together with the student chefs and they would all sit together, give thanks, and enjoy the very best of meals.

Autumn in our hemisphere is a time for harvesting the crops sown in the spring and grown in the summer. A time of abundance. A time of preparation for the coming winter, when the earth sleeps and rests and the light is less. A time of pregnant negativity, as UU minister Greta Crosby has said. And every people that grows their food has some celebration, some ceremony, some holiday and/or holy day to mark the occasion of harvest. Every one of these harvest festivals that I know about involves three things: gratitude for the gifts given; gatherings of the tribe, the community, the friends, the family, the people who, with nature, made the harvest happen; and the sharing of the fruits of that harvest. We call our holiday Thanksgiving. While others call theirs by different names, for every people, the harvest festival is the very best meal.

Song #349 We Gather Together (Text by Dorothy and Robert Senghas, UU’s, to the hymn tune Kremser, an old Dutch folk tune which originally with a text celebrating the 16th century liberation of Holland from Spanish rule.)

Harvest pt 2

From grade school on in this country we are taught one version of the “first” Thanksgiving. We learn from journals and other writings about the difficulties of the Pilgrims on board the Mayflower as it made its way across the Atlantic ocean. We learn about the landing in Plymouth, Massachusetts, that first winter, when about half the people lost their lives, and about the life-saving help given by the Wampanoag tribe, with whom that first feast was celebrated sometime between September 21 and November 11. The event was based on English harvest festivals. It was a gathering of tribes, a sharing of the harvest and an expression of gratitude. But this version is only one part of a complex, multi-faceted story.

What do the Wampanoags say about that first Thanksgiving? In 1970, at the commemoration of the 350th anniversary of the Pilgrims’ arrival in Plymouth, the Wampanoags selected Frank James to represent them with a speech. As it turns out, James was not allowed to give that speech because the officials didn’t like what he would have said. Here are some excerpts from it. “Today is a time of celebrating for you. . . but it is not a time of celebrating for me. It is with heavy heart that I look back upon what happened to my People. . . The Pilgrims had hardly explored the shores of Cape Cod four days before they had robbed the graves of my ancestors and stolen their corn, wheat and beans. . . . Massasoit, the great leader of the Wampanoag, knew these facts; yet he and his People welcomed and befriended the settlers. . . , little knowing that . . . before 50 years were to pass, the Wampanoags. . . and other Indians living near the settlers would be killed by their guns or dead from diseases that we caught from them.. . . Although our way of life is almost gone and our language is almost extinct, we the Wampanoags still walk the lands of Massachusetts. . . What has happened cannot be changed, but today we work toward a better America, a more Indian America where people and nature once again are important.” It’s painful, yet necessary, to hear both sides of this story. Does it mean we should not celebrate Thanksgiving? No, it doesn’t. But we must hold Thanksgiving with the courage to hear from all the participants, and to learn from both the triumph and the tragedy.

As Frank James said, the Wampanoags still walk the lands of Massachusetts and they continue to celebrate the harvest, as they have for hundreds and hundreds of years, with gratitude, a gathering of the people and the sharing of food. They call the harvest festival Cranberry Day. The Wampanoag living in Martha’s Vineyard (www.wampanoagtribe.net) describe it this way: “Our people have always had a cranberry harvest celebration. Cranberry Day is one of the many thanksgiving celebrations that happen throughout the year. . . . Cranberry Day is an important holiday for the Wampanoag tribe because it gives us a chance to give thanks to the Creator for this fruit that has always helped our people survive. . . Our ancestors have always taken time to go to the bogs and harvest the cranberries together; that is why Wampanoag children have the day off from school. During the morning and throughout the day only tribal families come to bogs to harvest. After everyone has had time to harvest, all the families get together and have a community lunch. Some of the elders tell about cranberry days from their past before we eat. Then, while we eat, some of the men and boys drum and sing. Although the day’s activities are for our tribal families alone, we invite our neighbors to come to a pot luck dinner during the night. Some families cook foods using the cranberries, so everyone can get a taste of the harvest.” It is the very best meal. In honor of the Wampanoag, and as a way for us to express thanks to this people and remember our connections with nature, we’re going to pass out some cranberries, raisins and nuts.

Song #67 We Sing Now Together (Text by Edwin Buehrer, Unitarian minister, to Kremser.)

Harvest pt 3

We have inherited a tradition of Thanksgiving. It’s about turkey, tofurkey, pumpkin pie, your aunt’s cranberry-orange relish, your father’s sweet potatoes. It’s a romantic myth. It’s a complicated story of survival and sorrow. But the practice of Thanksgiving, found among most every peoples, is larger than any particular tradition in any particular country. Gatherings of community, expressions of gratitude, sharing the harvest -- this is Thanksgiving. This is the very best meal. A festival of harvest. The question for each of us this Thanksgiving is, what harvests can we celebrate? What have you grown that you can now share with others? What are the fruits of the work you have joined with others to cultivate? Thanksgiving is not about what we have accomplished individually. It is about what we have done in concert that we can gratefully share with an even wider circle of people.

This Thanksgiving I celebrate a harvest. Last week I attended a ministers’ convocation in Ottawa and, as is my custom at ministers’ gatherings, I sang in the choir. I don’t read music and I don’t sing loudly, so basically I just learn by ear and figure out whom to stand beside. (They let anybody in these choirs.) This year we sang a song, in French and English, which had 33 pages of music to it. As the notes flew by I couldn’t even turn the pages fast enough. The French words, hard enough to simply say, were nearly impossible to sing and indeed I never got them all. We did not nail the piece, but when we sang at the closing worship service, we knew, and the congregation knew, that we had harvested something beautiful, for them and for us. It was a feast which the community: the choir, the music director and the pianist, worked to create and then shared with everyone who showed up. It didn’t need to be perfect. What crop is perfect? The harvest was beauty. The harvest was joy. The harvest was being moved in our hearts, being connected, by music. We could only have done this together.

What harvests can we celebrate here, in the congregation? Can you think of some? I can think of our UU teens and the bake sale they put together in order to buy shoes for an Iraqi family in our area. The harvest here is shoes, and cupcakes, and the youth group as a part of the larger congregation. I can think of the Bags of Blessings you just received, which our younger children decorated. You will fill and return them in a few weeks. The harvest here is the art of our children, and needed supplies for the Domestic Violence Shelter and the food pantry. I can think of Buy Nothing Day next week, which our Social Action committee plans and many of you help to run. (There are still opportunities to volunteer too.) People donate stuff in good condition and others come and take something, for free. Buy nothing, but take home some gifts anyway. The harvest here is making this time of year sweeter for those in need. And I dream of more harvests: further steps toward becoming a more environmentally aware congregation in our practices and our choices and in our buildings, for instance.

I know that some harvests produce only meager results, no matter how carefully we tend them. I know that some harvests are bitter. But I also know that when we join our harvests together we can sustain each other through the winters. What harvests have you realized this Thanksgiving in your families, in your work place, among your friends, in this congregation? What seeds have you planted; what crops have you tended; what bounty have you shared, together? What harvests do we yet only dream about?

What harvests will you mark this Thanksgiving? Take this time to reflect. Most of us rush headlong from one thing to another, we do not recognize the harvest. We do not let ourselves pause to feel gratitude for these harvests. Take the time to hold what was good, what was helpful, what connected you, one to another and each to all. Savor that which you shared, imperfect as it is. Celebrate it. This is Thanksgiving, the festival of harvests. May we all, in our various ways, enjoy the very best meal. It is what keeps us alive.

Meditation

Song #53 I Walk the Unfrequented Road (Text by Frederick Lucian Hosmer, Unitarian minister, to the hymn tune Consolation, written in the 19th c by Unitarian John Wyeth.)

Closing words

The flame of one candle can be used to light a hundred others without diminishing the original. So the flame of our chalice, yours and mine, has given itself generously to us that we may give ourselves to one another and to the world, in ways that sustain, that strengthen, that inspire.