Giving Thanks 11.26.15

Giving Thanks

11.26.15

Thanksgiving is a time of year we often get together with family and friends.

We celebrate that American tradition of the first Thanksgiving.

This account of the first Thanksgiving is from the National Geographic website:

It all started in 1621 the Wampanoag Indians

had lived in that area of Massachusetts for over 12,000 years.

An Indian leader and Squanto visited the settlers.

Squanto had visited many times and knew English.

They had forged an alliance to protect each other from the other tribes in the area.  

One day that fall, four settlers were sent to hunt for food for a harvest celebration.

The Wampanoag heard gunshots and alerted their leader, Massasoit,

who thought the English might be preparing for war.

Massasoit visited the English settlement with 90 of his men

to see if the war rumor was true.

Soon after their visit, the Native Americans realized

that the English were only hunting for the harvest celebration.

Massasoit sent some of his men to hunt deer for the feast.

For three days, the English and native men, women, and children ate together.

The meal consisted of deer, corn, shellfish, and roasted meat,

far from today's traditional Thanksgiving feast.

Although prayers and thanks

were probably offered at the 1621 harvest gathering,

the first recorded religious Thanksgiving Day in Plymouth

happened two years later in 1623.

Each of us has our Thanksgiving history.
As we head into this Thanksgiving, I give thanks.
I give thanks for all the good times, and not so good times.
Most of all I give thanks for those truly trying times in my life,
those very trying times of loss where my emotions
were molten by the fires of grief,
where my faith was forged into what it is today.

I believe it is important to remember the good times
and especially those trying times.
We are composites of what we have experienced,
and that is what makes us who we are today.
How we have met challenges and endured.
How we have found the stuff we are made of
and realized the strength, we have within.

In the end I believe

we are all here

to experience love,

to grow in love,

to share in love,

and to be love.

God blesses you and yours this day and every day.

All My Love Always, Keith

I am grateful for what I am and have.

My thanksgiving is perpetual.

Henry David Thoreau