A Blessed Thanksgiving Meal with Gratitude for All the People Known and Unknown Who Made it Possible
“Innumerable beings brought us this food. We should know how it comes to us.”
Another wonderful Thanksgiving gathering at our daughter’s mother-in-law Kim’s and husband Al Chien’s lovely home. Though the size of the event was half of what it would normally be were it not for the pandemic. Still, a good time was had by all.
Besides our hosts, our son Jason, daughter Michelle, her husband Kyle and our granddaughter Lyla, andKyle’s brother Chip, Cecile and myself were present. Before our meal, we congregated around Kim and Al’s new Kitchen having appetizers, wine and cocktails. Lyla who will be 2 years old soon was entertaining us with her yoga poses (downward dog) and trying on oversized oven gloves for her tiny hands.
Before our meal and the blessing we reflected on the effort that brought us this food we were about to nourish ourselves with and consider how it makes it’s way onto our plates. The food of course doesn’t grow and cook itself. There are cooks; there are farmers who plant, grow, harvest; and package the food, before being transported to the markets. A meal is the culmination of countless labors.
Suddenly, you realize your meal becomes an act of communion with vast numbers of people, known and unknown to whom we should extend our gratitude. People whom we will never see, never know by name, never meet, yet without them there would never be anything on our plates.
To make this point more vividly, Brother David Stendl-Rast, a Catholic Benedictine monk, teacher, author, and founder of the Network for Grateful Living, whom I had the pleasure and honor of meeting at Esalen Institute in Big Sur back in the day, tells a story. It’s about a wonderful cartoon where a Mexican family sits around the Thanksgiving table and says, “Thank you, Jesus.” Suddenly a cloud bubble appears in the cartoon and here comes a farm worker, whose name happens to be "Hesus,” Spanish for Jesus, who smilingly says, “Da Nada” (thank you).
So, all the farm workers, with the help of other people, our animals, our plants, minerals from the earth, and with the Great Mystery in which we are imbedded, which those who use the term correctly call “God.” It’s not somebody up there. It’s more personal than that…It is this tremendous mystery that we are totally informed by, related to, that makes us both human and spiritual beings.
In the spirit of the Thanksgiving holiday season leading up through the end of the year let’s be Grateful:
1-For the food on our tables and how it got here.
2-For all who collectively prepared the food.
3-For the Food banks feeding the hungry who have fallen on hard times
4-For the clothes on our backs
5-For all the front line essential workers
6-And, last but not least for the great scientists and physicians who created the coronavirus vaccines that will soon be available to all.
Postscript: Some of the above teachings were adapted from a Ted talk by Brother David Stendl-Rast that has been viewed five-million times. Now in his 90s, he is beloved by many around the world. Together with the late Trappist Monk Thomas Merton, they pioneered dialogue between Christians and Buddhists. The quote below the title of this post is a Buddhist prayer said before a meal cited by Brother David.
