To Remember and to Thank

God, 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 Nations people who welcomed them, and then lost their land.

We remember our family times filled with joy and filled with anxiety, and old scars still powerful.

We thank you 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 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.

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.

—Adapted from “At Thanksgiving,” by Walter Brueggemann in Prayers for a Privileged People