Thanksgiving in all seasons
A friend recently challenged my colleagues and me to re-think Thanksgiving. Traditionally, I have viewed Thanksgiving as a weekend observed in a festive environment involving way too much food in which people are nudged to deliberately focus on their blessings and express gratitude for them.
There was not much downside I could see to that kind of observance. It directed attention to blessings instead of problems and to gratitude rather than entitlement. My friend, however, contended that such a view of Thanksgiving remains superficial and to a certain extent artificial.
“What if someone is not in a season of blessing?” he asked. “Are they to make something up or fake their gratitude?” To be sure, it is always possible to find someone worse off and something to be grateful for, but that threshold seems to fall short of capturing and expressing authentic Thanksgiving?
“What if,” he proposed, “Thanksgiving became an integral part of all the seasons of life, not just those we typically think of as ‘blessed’ seasons?”
One thing led to another and to a talk given by Nancy Beach titled, “Seasons of the Soul.” She described life through the lens of all seasons, each with its accompanying primary emotion, from the anxiety and sense of foreboding often felt in autumn to the unrestrained joy of summer. We all know what it’s like to live in each of life’s seasons. We also know the error of believing the particular season we’re in will never end.
The deeper goal of Thanksgiving, my friend contended, was to learn to embrace each season of life as meaningful and instructive and to authentically express gratitude for the privilege of living in all seasons.
I think the exercise he had in mind is best expressed in the often misunderstood words of St. Paul when he wrote, “Give thanks in all circumstances; for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus.” Non-serious readers of those words have mocked him for saying it. “I just got cancer, thanks.” “I just crashed my car with no insurance, thanks.” “I just lost my job, thank you.”
Such frivolous interpretations of what was being said completely miss the mark. The goal is not to superficially fake gratitude for life’s difficulties but rather to address the much deeper question of whether I can learn to live contentedly and gratefully in seasons of winter and fall, as well as I do in the sunshine of summer.
Have I cultivated that depth of faith and maturity or does my gratitude depend on everything going my way?
As sure as autumn follows summer, challenging times insert themselves into seasons of joy. No one denies that reality.
The issue becomes how to face those seasons. St. Paul’s directive to people of faith is that we strive for a level of gratitude that transcends circumstances and seasons. It becomes more a matter of attitude and character than celebrating only our abundance.
Figuratively, most of us enjoy spring and summer and find it easy to smile on sunny, blue sky days. Some enjoy the beauty of autumn with all its colour, as long as they don’t focus too much on the decreasing daylight hours.
It’s a rare person, however, who reaches such a level of maturity that they express genuine contentment and gratitude on a blustery winter day.
Maybe Thanksgiving has more to teach than we typically practice.
Tim Schroeder is pastor at Trinity Baptist Church in Kelowna. This column appears in Okanagan Weekend.