Giving Thanks

Thanksgiving is upon us.

This one will be different from my last sixteen. While I was in parish ministry, Thanksgiving was always problematic. In Anaheim we had a service in the morning, and then people went home for dinner. A couple of times I wasn't invited anywhere and just shifted for myself. Usually, but not always, people invited me in advance, and that was always kind. A couple of times it was at the door after the service. "Where are you having dinner?" Well, actually nowhere, I would say, trying but not succeeding to keep my disappointment to myself. I had some really nice times those years. But to be a guest in someone else's home on a day with so many intimate associations was a challenge for me. I suppose I could have cooked a nice dinner and invited others, but, frankly, I wasn't up to it.

When I moved to New York City, I discovered, I am almost but not quite ashamed to admit, to my delight, that St. Edward's had no tradition of Thanksgiving Day services. Hallelujah. We had the usual Wednesday Eucharist and then I would betake myself to the monastery, catching the always packed train to Poughkeepsie. Being with the brothers was wonderful, but it wasn't quite home. So this year really is home! I'm here already, and so thankful to be in the midst of a loving community.

Things to give thanks for. The usual inventory of the present moment, of course: a roof overhead, heat, clothes, food, which so many do not have. A loving community to live in. Rewarding work to do. Reasonably good health. More interesting books to read than I can ever finish, and doubtless more coming my way. Friends. The Church, in all its present weirdness. The Order of the Holy Cross, now entering our 125th year. The House of the Redeemer, its wonderful staff and trustees, its great programs, the window on other worlds that it gives me. Music (I am listening to Haydn's Esterhazy operas in the evenings). And on and on. I sometimes feel guilty when I am in list mode for thanksgiving in prayer, because I always leave something important out.

And the inventory of the past: my family (though I would not always have put all of them on the list, I do now), especially my Aunt Mary who is 100 this year, made it to the party and beyond and is now beginning to fail; my parishes and their wonderful people, St. Edward's East Harlem, St. Michael's, Anaheim and Holy Family, Half Moon Bay; the brothers in OHC now gone who live on in heart and memory; my seminary, CDSP, and especially the Borschs; the Diocese of Los Angeles, with special memories of the Commission on Ministry for many years; Cornell and Michigan State and Western High School and Hyde Park Junior High School and Edison Elementary School; All Saints, Las Vegas and St. James, Pullman WA; the monasteries I have lived in -- Holy Cross in West Park (in the old days -- the 70's are now the old days!), Toronto, Berkeley, and of course, Mount Calvary; the Camaldolese brothers, with joyful regard to Robert Hale and Andrew Colnaghi; the Camaldolese monastery at San Gregorio Magno in Rome; the Anaheim Police Department, who welcomed me as their chaplain for five years; the Spanish language and Hispanic people I ministered to for so long, and especially the undocumented ones, whose faces just pop into my head unbidden from time to time, needing prayer, I suppose; the seminarians and recent seminary graduates I have mentored and who have now gone on to ordination and whatever their priesthood has been called to; spiritual directees over the years; so many places I have preached; the list is just going to get longer.

And then there are the things which did not seem to be blessings at the time. The disasters and traumas and losses, the conflicts, the closed doors, the attempts which failed. I used to be depressed by them, but now I give thanks for them. Each one proved to be a blessing eventually, from learning from the experience, from moving away from something I wanted but wasn't really for me, from learning t0 love the realities that God had placed me in, from being forced to grow into skills and identities I never imagined I would need to have. I think my greatest growth has always come from the things that did not work out. And one of the things about growing older is that the turnaround time decreases. When I was younger I would spend a lot of energy on my reactions, tenderly nurturing my disappointments. But I have learned that those plants don't bear very good fruit.

So, Thanks for not being admitted to grad school at Yale or Princeton but to Cornell. Thanks for not getting a job in my field. Thanks for being told to shut up about my great learning when I was a postulant in OHC. Thanks for living in our priory in Berkeley when we had no money for food sometimes. Thanks for not being sent to Texas when I graduated from CDSP but to Mount Calvary instead. Thanks for being made Novice Master in a really difficult situation in the 80's. Thanks for the Order losing its wealth in the early 80s. Thanks for the sewage system at Mount Calvary collapsing. Thanks for not being reappointed prior in 1990 when I wanted it more than anything. Thanks for communal problems in Berkeley. Thanks for reaching my limit and deciding to do parish work but not leave OHC. Thanks for all the parishes that did not elect me rector. Thanks for St. Michael's denying its own future to itself and thanks for the conflict it brought. And for two things which are certainly not causes for rejoicing in any objective way, but set up conditions for grace to flow: Thanks for the poverty in East Harlem, because without it there would not have been the parish of St. Edward's that is so faithful there. Thanks for 9/11 just months after I moved to NYC, because without it there would not have been the many opportunities for ministry it brought. This list could go on and on too.

So, this fall, death, the economy down the tubes, Mount Calvary lost to fire.... It's a lot. But I give thanks, because I know that people who meet loss with faith and energy and determination find new life.