9You visit the earth and water it abundantly; you make it very plenteous; the river of God is full of water. (Psalm 65)
Last month, there was unprecedented flooding in eastern Libya from cyclone Daniel which roared across the Mediterranean. In Libya alone, thousands are missing and feared dead.
Where in some places the earth is arid and in desperate need of water, so many regions are being inundated with deadly amounts of too much water.
Water is like thanksgiving. It’s not just about one weekend in October to call to mind all those things for which we ought to be thankful for. It’s not even about being thankful only when we feel like it, or when conditions in our lives warrant it, or when we pretend to be.
Psalm 65 comes from a section in this book of the bible that are mostly laments, or prayers of anguish and petition for help in the midst of untold suffering. Nearly a third of all the Psalms are laments. And we sing Psalm 65 in the midst of all these laments.
The challenge before us is to consider thanksgiving in the midst of all that life brings. Our practice of thanksgiving may be a genuine response to the good in our lives, yes. But, as Diana Butler Bass suggests in her book on gratitude, thanksgiving is an ethic.[1] And therefore, must be a discipline. Something we work at despite the circumstances of our lives.
Thanksgiving is about practising gratitude in the moment. So, the practice of thanksgiving is not about some over-arching, theoretical conclusion about one’s life—whether it’s good or bad, or whether things have gone your way, or not. It’s not a one-time public observance as much as it is a quiet, continuous attitude towards life in general.
It’s more about learning to recognize each moment, good and bad, as holding the promise and potential of God’s loving presence. Thanksgiving is about paying attention to the grace of God now. And leaving everything else—thoughts, biases, prejudices, pre-conceived notions—leaving all that behind to embrace what is, without judgement.
There’s nothing better than being submerged in cold water to bring you into the present moment. What is the first thing you recognize when someone emerges out of the water after a surprisingly refreshing and perhaps unexpected dip: Their eyes are wide open. There’s no other place your mind, body, and spirit can be when the impact of water wakes you up to the moment.
Baptism is about water. Our tradition has been these tiny fonts. But Martin Luther—the great reformer of the 16th century—preferred full immersion. That was his bias, and for good reason: The whole body is involved, not just the head. Water brings us into the present moment.
There’s a stone baptismal font on the northwestern shore of Lake Galilee that I visited years ago. It dates to around the 5th century. What I like about this font is that the opening is shaped in a cross. This font is also deep enough for someone to be fully immersed in the water.
The baptized would have to sit down in one of the four sections and make the confession of faith before being submerged in the water. The font was in a church right beside seven springs whose water flows strongly, gushing to the surface.[2]
Baptism is one of the two sacraments in the Lutheran Church. The other one is the Holy Communion whose Greek word, “Eucharist”, means the “Great Thanksgiving”. Both sacraments are thanksgivings. We engage God and reality with hearts trained in thanksgiving, facing whatever direction our life has taken us.
The four directions of Indigenous spirituality support this wholistic approach to our work of thanksgiving. For example, in the smudging / sweetgrass ceremony, you pray turning to face all the compass directions: east, south, west, north. And facing each direction one offers a prayer of thanksgiving[3]:
When you face east, you are thankful for all good things that come from the east, typically the gift of the sun and its light and warmth that keeps life going.
When you face south, you give thanks for times of healing and restoration in your life, signified by the warm winds which blow from the south.
When you face west, you give thanks for our ancestors, those who have gone before us, those who have passed beyond the horizon into eternal life; we are all headed west towards the setting sun of our own life.
And finally, when we face north, we give thanks for the gift of wisdom because the north wind is always angry; hard things come from the north, and therefore we are encouraged in the path of discernment and wisdom.
Thanksgiving underlies all the directions of our lives, not just one or the other.
In a life of thanksgiving, we embrace all experiences. We meet all challenges with grace. We are present to each moment, realizing it is all grace. That is thanksgiving. It is a giving it up, a releasing of the heart into the ocean of love and life that holds us all.
American Indigenous theologian Randy Woodley expresses it best. He describes the sacred power of giving oneself over to nature. I can relate, when I’ve gone camping and slept in a tent on the ground, sleeping by the waterside or a river running over rapids nearby:
“Sleeping in the bosom of nature is not the same as sleeping in the safety of one’s own home. Not at all. As you lay your body down to become one with the Earth, reality shifts. In that state, you can sense that God, Creator, is listening to the intentions of your heart. Whatever the mysterious power is behind creation, it softens one’s mind. Great Mystery unscrews the tight lids of the jars of certainty that you hold too tightly, too fiercely. You realize, sometimes even trembling, that something greater than yourself is meeting you.
“There, in the restful unknown world between sleep and wakefulness, you give yourself to those elements, to Spirit, in the kind of vulnerability a newborn to the world must experience.
“As I dozed off into the realm of sacred beauty next to that stream, I listened to how the water responded to each rock, to every branch protruding from the creek bank, and to the swirl of every curve as it “meandered past me and into some other creature’s nap. With each contact, the water had a particular note and registry of sound.
Over the rocks, around the curve, and down the path of its sacred water journey. Sacred sleep. Sacred water. Sacred life.”[4]
It’s okay if you don’t feel thankful this weekend, for whatever reasons and burdens you carry with you. It’s okay, because while you don’t feel it now, you will someday. Religion is never a one-time, one-off, experience. It is something that grows, organically, in your heart through the good and the bad. And there will be times when the gift emerges with joy.
For Thanksgiving is a process, an attitude and a practice. It is a river that continues to flow deep within giving life and love.
[1] Diana Butler Bass, Grateful: The Transformative Power of Giving Thanks (New York: Harper One, 2018)
[2] In a Byzantine church at the Seven Springs of Tabgha. On the four directions in a Christian context, read Alexander John Shaia, Heart and Mind: The Four-Gospel Journey for Radical Transformation, Third Edition (New Mexico: Quadratos, 2021), p.183: “This form of the cross … was the shape that was venerated during the years these gospels were composed and it served–with rare exception–as the shape of the baptistry into the seventh century.”
[3] Raymond Aldred & Matthew Anderson, Our Home and Treaty Land: Walking our Creation Story (Kelowna BC: Wood Lake Publishing, 2022), p.28-29.
[4] Randy Woodley, Becoming Rooted: One Hundred Days of Reconnecting with Sacred Earth (Minneapolis: Broadleaf Books, 2022), p.16.
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