Sometimes, life doesn't turn out the way you expect. A snow storm hits, and suddenly you're stranded in an airport instead of eating turkey and mashed potatoes with your family. You wake up in the morning, and your car won't start. A second-rate reality television star becomes President of the United States.
Life simply has a way of throwing curve balls at you all the time.
I have a good friend who's hurting this evening. A person full of love and smiles, all the time. My friend's life has been affected significantly by addiction. The person she loves the most has become a stranger to her. I understand the pain and grief that she's going through. It's like dragging fathoms and fathoms of chains around with you, to borrow an image from A Christmas Carol. No matter where you are, what your'e doing, who you're with--you just can't escape it.
Today is Thanksgiving. This morning, my friend texted me and said, "I'm just not feeling it."
I want to remind my friend that she is surrounded by angels. She can be thankful for that. I want to remind her that, even in the eye of the hurricane, she can find peace. She can be thankful for that. And I want to remind her, especially, that life isn't defined by curve balls. It's defined by how much she is loved. She can be thankful for that.
Be well, my friend. I said a prayer for you this evening. It was a prayer of thanks. That you exist, and that you bring light into the world.
You are one of the blessings in Saint Marty's life this Thanksgiving.
Bigfoot
Gives Thanks
by: Martin Achatz
after
Gerard Manley Hopkins
He doesn’t chase down a turkey,
wring
its pink neck like a wet dish rag,
gut it with his thumb, cook it
in sun and fly and maggot for days,
serve it with sides of chewed yam,
moose marrow, fermented pumpkin
guts, green with time, smelling
strong as a bear den at winter’s
end.
He doesn’t smooth his hair with mud,
brush his teeth with fresh milkweed,
cram himself into a church pew
beside blue-haired widows who look
at his gorilla arms and long
to feel their dead husbands’ dark
embraces in bed at night again.
Doesn’t stand when the organ
starts breathing music, raise the
siren
of his voice to “Now Thank We
All Our God” until the stained glass
rattles and fractures, letting seams
of pure white stitch all gathered
with the shook foil of the world.
No.
His way is simpler, a morning
glory leaning toward day, unfolding,
shaking off the teary dew of
darkness.
Stand outside at dawn or dusk. The bent
world is charged with his hairy
gratitude, in the long-legged
shadows
of first and last light as they
stretch
and stretch and stretch down the
street,
across railroad trestle, through hayfields,
cornfields, into pines and poplar--
further and further and further--mountain,
swamp and lake, canyon and cave,
ocean, glacier, savanna, desert,
until, at last, they have touched it
all.
All the grandeur of deep down things.
