In reading the Presbyterian Outlook last week, I came across a poem by J. Barrie Shepherd – “To Give Thanks…” and there I found fresh new thoughts and deeper reasons for giving thanks.
“To Give Thanks…”
is to remember how it feels
to experience belonging, to look long
around a laden table and be glad to claim
a place among that gathered company.
To give thanks is to remember
what has been – time’s bewildering recital –
and, despite so much, to look ahead
with undiminished hope.
To give thanks is to recall with heartache
all those absent from the assembled,
the dear departed, those, too,
who never made it in the first place,
due to loss, or want, foul fortune, being born
at the wrong place, at the wrong time.
To give thanks takes all that we have been,
all that we are and yet might be, and shapes it new
around a fuller, richer, broader future feast.
As we gather with family and friends this Thanksgiving Day, may each of us give thanks in deeper ways than ever before. Happy Thanksgiving!
Elizabeth
Maya Angelou’s poem “Continue” has much to say to us as we deal with the many challenges of these days:
“My wish for you Is that you continue
Continue
To be who and how you are
To astonish a mean world
With your acts of kindness
Continue
In a society dark with cruelty
To let the people hear the grandeur
Of God in the peals of your laughter
Continue
To remind the people that
Each is as good as the other
And that no one is beneath
Nor above you
Continue
To put the mantel of your protection
Around the bodies
of the young and defenseless
Continue
To take the hand of the despised
And diseased and walk proudly with them
In the high street
Some might see you and
Be encouraged to do likewise
Continue
To plant a public kiss of concern
On the cheek of the sick
And the aged and infirm
And count that as a
Natural action to be expected
Continue
To let gratitude be the pillow
Upon which you kneel to
Say your nightly prayer
And let faith be the bridge
You build to overcome evil
and welcome good.
Continue”
May God help us never to give up hope; let us “continue” to work together for a better world, praying for those streams of mercy, never ceasing.
Elizabeth
We all need a reminder of how Veterans Day came to be! In Belgium and France, November 11 is “Remembrance Day”, a national holiday marking the armistice signed between the Allies and Germany at Compiègne, France, for the cessation of hostilities on the Western Front, which took effect at 11:00 am—the "eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month." In the United States, we celebrated Armistice Day on that date, celebrating the end of World War I and honoring those soldiers who were involved in that effort. By 1954, Americans had served in World War II and the Korean War, causing veterans service organizations to urge Congress to change Armistice Day to Veterans Day. This way, service members from all wars would be honored and not just those who served in World War I. Each year on November 11, we do just that.
We celebrated our veterans at the Jackson Springs Community Club last evening. We had Army, Air Force and Navy veterans among us. Many of us remembered our parents and shared their service to our country as well. Each year I remember and give thanks for my father’s service with the United States Marines in the islands of the South Pacific. When I was a little girl, I thought he was one of the Marines lifting the flag on Iwo Jima! He wasn’t one of those men, but he was one of the brave Marines who fought on Iowa Jima and continued doing so across the Pacific.
I was moved this year by a story in The Pilot, of a little boy and his father, a Green Beret, now on his tenth deployment. The boy told his story and his father did the illustrations. The book is said to be “a representation of our forgotten heroes, the tiny ones who hide behind the more visible sacrifices of their parents.” The book, Brave for My Family was published in early November, and proceeds from book sales will support other military families and Wounded Warriors. The book opens with a G.K. Chesterton quote, “The true soldier fights not because he hates what is in front of him, but because he loves what is behind him.”
This poem touched my heart:
The Last Soldier
When the last soldier passes on,
When armies are disbanded and militias discharged,
When weapons are abandoned and armor discarded,
Your mission will, at last, be over,
For you know the soldier’s secret.
Yours was not a mission of war,
Nor a mission of ruin;
Yours was not a mission of destruction,
Nor a mission of death.
Your mission was safety, security, protection.
Your mission was honor, loyalty, service.
Your mission was to end violence, tyranny, despair.
When the last soldier passes on, when the uniforms are retired and the final grave filled,
We will remember all who served and sacrificed for our nation.
We closed our brief Veterans’ Day observance at the Jackson Springs Community Club with the reading of the poem, “In Flanders Field” and the song “Let There Be Peace on Earth…..and let it begin with me.” May it be so, as those streams of mercy carry us on!
Elizabeth