more than watchmen for the morning

giving thanks

Thanksgiving, after all, is a word of action. ~W.J. Cameron

We would take off our helmets in the hot August sun and watch the steam rise off our heads.  Georgia summers would persist to a height in August when we did our two-a-day practices back in the late 90’s. It was high school and we thought we knew the world and ourselves because we had newly minted driver’s licenses and hand-me-down cars filled to the brim with cheap gasoline.  We saddled up to this long plastic tube with about 50 holes cut up and a standard green water hose hooked up to the end of it.  Some assistant coach would turn the tap and perfect city water would pour through that hose, giving the water a taste of rubber and plastic. We didn’t care at all.  We drank until we couldn’t anymore and then we gave way to the next person.  We lived each practice for those water breaks, these moments of pause where we’re completely refreshed. 

When I think about Thanksgiving it sort of sets my head wandering to those moments back in high school with the water break at practice.  You are truly thankful when you taste that water, you’re so relieved to have it. When you’re tired and you’re going a mile a minute then you begin to think that you’ll never have another moment like that. You get a little panicked, a little worried, like you’ll never be a person again the way you used to be. 

Then in some brilliant moment the lights go on and you’re back where you need to be.  You’re at a cafe with a tall americano after a long day of walking. You’re sitting in a room full of friends on a night where the team you work with came together to make it happen.  You meet students that believe in what you’re doing and they give of themselves to make community happen here in Selly Oak. 

I am so thankful that I am not alone. I am so thankful that I am forgiven, and that I have friends and family that will forgive me, because I am a man in great need of grace. I am thankful for warm rooms and the smells of coffee and books. I am thankful for redemption in our relationships, for reconciliation, for coming back to the center: each of  us living a million eternal returns back to the cottages of our lives: those broken scoundrels that we love, those lost sheep that we need, those villages where we were born: we always come back around, though the texture of each room changes a bit from revolution to revolution. 

We are all near and far. We all need one another, and the very idea that we have each other at all should cause us to fall down and weep with gratitude every day of our lives. But we get busy trying to chase wolves through canyons and our sight gets dim in the twilight, unable to see what we have behind to hold us. We’re trying to catch trains out west to find a new horizon, but the notion that we have anywhere or anyone to return to at all is such a profound gift that I can scarcely take it. 

So I’m thankful today.  May I remember tomorrow what filled my heart yesterday and draw from it like water from a well in August.