Approaching Thanksgiving

Walter Brueggemann published Prayers for a Privileged People in 2008. (Abingdon Press) I've admired him for a long time, for his ability to say important things with a few right words, prophet words. The collection is poetic prayers. Picking it up again this morning, I was drawn to the title "At Thanksgiving" and will quote it here in full. Maybe those algorithms that track important words (see my last post) will at lease give Walter Brueggemann a shout out.


Amid football,
family, and
too much food,
we pause quickly and without inconvenience
to remember and to thank.
We remember ancient pilgrims
who followed dreams of alabaster cities
and financial opportunity;

We remember hospitable first nation people
who welcomed them, and then lost their land;
We remember other family times
filled with joy and
filled with anxiety, and
old scars still powerful.
We thank yo for this U.S.venue of
justice and freedom,
and are aware of its flawed reality;
We thank you for our wealth and our safety,
and are aware of how close to poverty we are
and how under threat we live.

We gather our impulse for gratitude today,
grateful to you and to our ancestors,
grateful to you for our families,
our health,
our government,
our many possessions.

We gladly affirm that
"All good gifts around us are sent from heaven above,"
But we yield to none in a sense of self-sufficiency,
our weariness in needing to share,
our resentfulness of those who take and do not give.

Your generosity evokes our gratitude,
but your generosity overmatches our gratitude.
We are ready to thank,
but not overly so;
We remember our achievements,
our accomplishments,
our entitlements,
and our responsibilities
that slice away our yielding of ourselves to you.

Move through our half measure of thanks
and let us be, all through this day,
more risky in acknowledging
that we have nothing except what you give.

You have given so much--not least your only Son.
Gift us the gift of dazzlement and awe
that we may rejoice in our penultimate lives
and keep you ultimate all the day long,
relishing the wonder of your self-giving love.