A Thanksgiving Journal

A couple of years ago, I kept a Thanksgiving Journal. It was Garrison Keillor's idea, really, in a 2003 Christian Century interview.

Yes, indeed. Gratitude is where spiritual life begins. Thank you, Lord, for this amazing and bountiful life and forgive us if we do not love it enough. Thank you for this laptop computer and for this yellow kitchen table and for the clock on the wall and the cup of coffee and the glasses on my nose and for these black slacks and this black T-shirt. Thanks for black, and for other colors. Thank you, Lord, for giving me the wherewithal not to fix a half-pound cheeseburger right now and to eat a stalk of celery instead. Thank you for the wonderful son and the amazing little daughter and the smart sexy wife and the grandkids. Thank you that I haven't had alcohol in lo! these many months and thank you that it isn't a big struggle to do without, as I had so feared it might be. Thank you for the odd delight of being 60, part of which is the sheer relief of not being 50.

I could go on and on and on. One should enumerate one's blessings and set them before the Lord. Begin every day with this exercise.

List your blessings and you will walk through those gates of thanksgiving and into the fields of" joy. It is to break through the thin membrane of sourness and sullenness--though we should be thankful for that too, it being the source of so much wit and humor--and to come into the light and enjoy our essential robustness and good health."

Seemed like good advice. I think I'll drop in some thanksgiving every once in awhile.

Day 135

The sky was perfectly clear when I left the house, stars shining so bright you could hear them. That’s good, because it means a bright sun; but it’s also not so good: clouds create drama and good landscape photos, like good stories, require conflict.
What seemed a single cloud moved quickly east when I was out in a field, waiting for the dawn. That’s when I realized the sky was going to fill, fast.

And it did. That single cloud grew into a broad, dark shield that itself became a reflector for the brilliant sun. Between the two of them, they burnished absolutely everything. For just a moment I stood in a world that had turned to gold.

I was in the middle of a bean field, not the right place for the perfect shot; but I was there at the right time, and for that marvelous light show I am thankful.