Thanksgiving 2010

Glimmers-Thanksgiving 2010


I will give thanks to you, LORD, with all my heart; I will tell of all your wonderful deeds. Ps. 9:1

“Look Papa,” he said, “Its an Indian and a Pilgrim.” His little paper cut-out figures had been neatly colored by his 5 year old hands. “Nice work. Its getting close to Thanksgiving,” I said. “Thanksgiving?” he replied. I went on to explain that at the first Thanksgiving the Pilgrims and the Indians got together to celebrate a bountiful harvest. It turns out there is much more to the story. Isn’t that always the case?

In 1620, to escape religious persecution, the Pilgrims left England for America. They arrived in December of 1620, stayed mostly on the Mayflower through that winter, struggling with scurvy and other illnesses. By the time spring rolled around, nearly half of them had died. Their first attempts at farming didn’t turn out so well and an Indian named Squanto, a former slave in England, offered to teach them what to plant and how to grow it in America. 1622 fell far short of expectations as well because the way the community was organized didn’t produced the desired result. Governor Bradford wisely chose to do things differently and productivity soared. The following autumn of 1623 brought a bountiful harvest. The Pilgrims invited Squanto and Massasoit, the chief of the Wampanoags (really, I’m not making this up) to bring their immediate families to join them for a celebration of thanksgiving. Little did they know that “immediate family” in Wampanoag means anyone closer than third cousin, twice removed.

So a host of people came, dragging five freshly killed deer with them. They all dined on venison, squash, various fowl (turkey was not in any records) lobster, beans and other things. No pumpkin pies. Along with the harvest bounty, what they had in abundance were thankful hearts. They were alive. The village was flourishing. They had never heard of political correctness, so they gave thanks to God for “blessing the harvest.” Imagine.

Now I won’t bore you with all the details, and there are many more and they are not really boring at all, but I need to get on to my primary point. We owe Thanksgiving Day as a national holiday not to the Pilgrims or Squanto or George Washington or even Abraham Lincoln whose proclamation still sends chills up my spine. We owe the day to a woman named Sarah Josepha Hale.

Sarah Josepha Hale was a remarkable woman of significant literary skill. In a time when the education of women was not deemed important, her family made sure she was. Though she could not go to college, her brother went to Dartmouth and he shared what he learned with her. After she married Mr. Hale and had five children, Mr. Hale died leaving her to care for their five young children alone. They had been married for only eleven years.

Her gift for writing had not gone unnoticed and she published poems and novels and eventually became the editress, the title she preferred to editor, of Godey’s Lady’s Book, the most influential women’s publication of its day.

It was her lobbying effort over a span of forty years that finally convinced Abraham Lincoln to make Thanksgiving a national holiday, unifying various state celebrations across the land. As I read about her and her role in our national Thanksgiving celebration, I wondered about what drove her to such dedication to thankfulness. My guess is that her hardships were as much responsible as her blessings. Hardships have a way of seasoning our blessings, making them all the sweeter. That’s the way is seems to work with most people.

So you can thank Sarah Josepha Hale tomorrow as you give thanks for so many other things. And should you forget about her tomorrow, try singing “Mary Had a Little Lamb.” She’s responsible for that too.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Jerald

Thanksgiving Edition

Glimmers
November 20, 2009

"I thank my God every time I remember you..." (Phil. 1:3, NASV)

Last night my wife asked me to get the little pilgrim salt and pepper shakers, napkin holder and spoon rest from the top shelf of the cabinet above the oven. They are from the collection Publix supermarket used to sell, now discontinued, I'm sad to say. Thanksgiving preparations have begun in earnest at the Smith house.

That got me thinking about being thankful. As I began thinking this through on my morning walk, I thought about the farmer who got up at 4 a.m. to milk the cows that produced the milk I put in my morning coffee. Our society is so removed from the production of the things we use everyday, I’ll bet there are people who don’t even know milk comes from cows. Some people are so confused about it they think the chicken in those Chick-fil-A commercials comes from those Holsteins carrying the sign, “Eat mor chikn.” But chicken doesn’t come from cows, beef does. And besides, those are DAIRY cows. Hello!

This ignorance about where things come from is boldly displayed at the fast food restaurants that proclaim their burgers are from “100% Angus beef.”Angus cows are just beef cows with black hair. I suspect the beef from red Santa Gertrudis or gray Brahman or white Charolais cows is just as good, they just need better marketing. But I digress. The point is how many things have you used today that someone else worked very hard to produce? How many others gave their time and expertise in the doing of their jobs so that you could do yours? At the risk of missing some of the hundreds of people involved, allow me to illustrate. I’ll begin with arriving at work this morning, just to keep it simple.

I parked my car and before I could lock the doors, a volunteer driving the shuttle arrived and asked if I needed a ride. I noticed the grounds were neatly trimmed, thanks guys! The South entrance door opened automatically, thank you Business Office for paying FPL. Thank you to HIS for coding the procedures so the Business Office could bill for them to receive payment so we could pay FPL. I saw clean floors because environmental services had worked hard overnight to scrub, polish and vacuum them. I unlocked the door to my office and turned on my computer. Thank you Information Systems! I took the daily census and referrals off the printer to start planning my day. Admitting, nursing, and clinical informatics all had a hand in that. So many people to thank already and I had barely begun the day!

Now think about your job. Who ordered the gloves, prepared the meds, cooked the food, restocked linens, mopped the floors, drew the labs, took the Xrays, did the surgery, filed the reports, input the data, delivered the meals, transported the patient from the OR, and…well I think you get the picture. We all have hundreds of others to thank for their contributions to our being able to do our jobs.

Between now and Thanksgiving Day, how about telling some of them thanks for doing what they do so you have the opportunity to do what you do. And remember, as my minister likes to say, “Teamwork makes the dream work.”

Happy Thanksgiving!

Jerald