giving thanks.

I hope that today was a beautiful day for you, wherever you were, whomever you spent the day with, whatever variation on the national theme you ate for your Thanksgiving dinner. I had a lovely day of celebration back home. It wasn't hard to enjoy the day -- I'm quite the fan of any event that gives cause for the gathering of family and friends and the preparing and eating of good food.

And I am glad for the reminder to be thankful, as there is so much to be thankful for...

I am thankful for people: this wonderful family of mine, my beautiful community in GR and the friends that scattered but remain so dear.

I am thankful for these last few months of confusion and complication and lack of direction and for all that they taught me. I am thankful that God is larger and greater than I imagine and his plan more complex and difficult and better than mine could ever be.

And oh heavens, I am thankful for a job, for a job that pays the bills, a job that, on most days, I like! May I never forget to be thankful for this.

And I am thankful also for coffee and poetry, for words and correct punctuation and photographs, for resale shops and community gardens, for farmers markets and a warm winter coat, for ovens that function and chimneys that stay put, for art and music and those that create them, for food and friends to eat with, for a great big beautiful world and people who want to make it better and a God who lets us be part of the change.

Oh yes, I am so thankful. May the same be true of you, today and always. Happy Thanksgiving, dear ones.

i thank you God for most this amazing

e.e. cummings

i thank You God for most this amazing

day:for the leaping greenly spirits of trees

and a blue true dream of sky; and for everything

which is natural which is infinite which is yes

(i who have died am alive again today,

and this is the sun's birthday; this is the birth

day of life and of love and wings: and of the gay

great happening illimitably earth)

how should tasting touching hearing seeing

breathing any--lifted from the no

of all nothing--human merely being

doubt unimaginable You?

(now the ears of my ears awake and

now the eyes of my eyes are opened)

My contribution to the feast: Fruit and nut stuffed acorn squash