Social Justice & Advocacy Column November 22, 2023

A Thanksgiving Prayer

by Diana Butler Bass

GOD, there are many days we do not feel grateful. When we are anxious or angry. When we feel alone. When we do not understand what is happening in the world or with our neighbors. When the news is bleak and confusing. When there are threats, injustice, and war.

We struggle to feel grateful.

But this Thanksgiving, we choose gratitude.

We choose to accept life as a gift from you, and as a gift from the unfolding work of all creation.

We choose to be grateful for the earth from which our food comes; for the water that gives life; and for the air we all breathe.

We choose to thank our ancestors, those who came before us, for their stories and struggles; we receive their wisdom as a continuing gift for today.

We choose to see our families and friends with new eyes, accepting them for who they are. We are thankful for our homes, whether humble or grand.

We choose to appreciate and care for our neighbors whatever our differences or how much we feel hurt or misunderstood by them.

We choose to see the world as our shared commons, our home now and the legacy we will leave to the generations to come.

God, this Thanksgiving, we do not give thanks. We choose it.

We will make this choice of thanks with courageous hearts, knowing that it is humbling to say “thank you.” We choose to open ourselves to your sacred generosity, aware that we live in an unending circle of gratitude. We all are guests at your hospitable table around which gifts are passed and received.

We will not let anything opposed to love take over this table. Instead, we embrace grace, unconditional love, the giftedness of life everywhere. In this choosing, and in the making of this meal, we will pass gratitude onto the world.

Thus, with you, with all those gathered at this table, and with those at tables far distant, we pledge to make thanks. We ask you to strengthen us in this resolve. Here, now, and into the future. Around our family table. Around the table of our nation. Around the table of the earth.

We choose thanks.

Amen.