Four hymns to Thanksgiving practice
Hymn to a room of my own
The room where I sit to write is a room of my own, the first I have had since I was a child. It is filled with images of strong women on whose shoulders I stand: family, healers, spiritual masters, goddesses. Filled with books overflowing with both knowledge and questions. Decades of journals. Artwork of family, friends, my own. Lilah is stretched out on the healing table for her extended morning nap.
Here I exhale. Here I feel myself. Here I meet with other women who are in pain. Here I plug into Zoom and meet with colleagues across the country and across the ocean. Here I watch a strong wind speed clouds towards the southeast. Solitude and connection.
Hymn to writing
I have been blogging weekly now for fifteen months. As with any practice, sometimes I am inspired, and other times it’s a slog. Always, the practice demands honesty, the most impeccable discernment I can muster. And it hews me to conventions of language and grammar and a willingness to break with them for good reason. Drop the subject from a sentence. Run on like a Proustian paragraph. Give up on narrative altogether and turn to poetry.
Poetry – here too I exhale. I trust sound and line length and white space. A period: ● Or its absence. When a Hebrew word לְדַבֵּר speaks or detracts. This is my brief hymn of Thanksgiving to punctuation.
Hymn to gifts received
A life that is more stable than most. A body with some growing limitations that still allows me to move around the world in the ways I treasure. A mind that is wedded to one passionate inquiry after another. Currently: bringing the wisdom of nondual practice to working with social identities; and the Hebrew letter Gimel, which is said to personify Giving and also has a numerical value of 3. A husband who silently recites his wedding vows to me every Friday evening at the Shabbos table as he slips the wedding band on my finger. Daughters who continue to teach and inspire me through shring books, moveies, and their own life lessons. Friends who loaned us their condo for a month while we had work done on our house. A colleague who takes so much responsibility for her opinions and actions that I am actually learning as we work together how to be in conflict, even disconnection, and stay in relationship. A richness of communities and colleagues – of healing, of inquiry, of writing, of practice, of vision and action, of readers.
Hymn to the Thanksgiving Table
This year I come to the table as a guest, in a tradition-breaking and welcome change, the table….
….. as a gathering of aromas and flavors and recipes to be exchanged
….. as a an invitation to listening and sharing and rewriting stories
….. as a privileged place of safety in a world where legions of humanity are without roof, walls, table and food
….. as an altar and a focal point of ceremony and ritual
….. as a place of healing, where each guest may take in nourishment she needs to come home to herself
May we each be inspired to work in our own way
to bring about food, table, walls, roof, a place to exhale,
for every human being.
You are guests around my Thanksgiving table
Dear Friends –
It is just over a year that many of you have been following my blog posts.
This year of sharing my writing and practice with you have changed me both “for the better,” and “for good,” as Glinda and Elphaba sing to one another in Wicked, The Musical.
During this time, many “former” interests and areas of study have reappeared. They are knocking about in my heart and mind, shaking off years of dust and neglect. Insistent about wanting to be reintegrated as living presences in my life – social engagement, formal prayer, scriptural teachings from my Eastern path, a poetry manuscript I put aside over a year ago. These are some of my working edges, and I’ll continue to explore them in your good company.
Have you too been changed for the better over this past year? for good?
What are your working edges now?
What questions are you struggling with?
And what would you like to read about here in the coming months and year?
What kind of nourishment would help restore you to yourself?
Please take a moment out of your own holiday observances to respond in the COMMENT BOX below.
I’ll be paying attention.
I send you my deep gratitude in this season of giving thanks, for kind words, thoughtful comments, provocative questions. In a very real sense, I will feel your presence as guests around my family’s Thanksgiving table.
My dear friend Suzanne read the following poem to us at her table a few nights ago, and I’ll be sharing it at ours on Thursday evening.
Love and blessings to you and yours, and to the Greater Family of which each of our families is a part.
Sara
In Thanksgiving
adapted from the prayerbook Mishkan T’filah, used by Reform Jewish Congregations
For the expanding grandeur of Creation,
worlds known and unknown,
galaxies beyond galaxies,
filling us with awe
and challenging our imaginations,
we give thanks this day.
For this fragile planet earth,
its times and tides,
its sunsets and seasons,
we give thanks this day.
For the joy of human life,
its wonders and surprises,
its hopes and achievements,
we give thanks this day.
For our human community,
our common past and future hope,
our oneness transcending all separation,
our capacity to work for peace and justice
in the midst of hostility and oppression,
we give thanks this day.
For high hopes and noble causes,
for faith without fanaticism,
for understanding of views not shared,
we give thanks this day.
For all who have labored
and suffered for a fairer world,
who have lived so that others might live
in dignity and freedom,
we give thanks this day.
For human liberties and sacred rites,
for opportunities to change and grow,
to affirm and choose,
we give thanks this day.
We pray that we may live
not by our fears but by our hopes,
not by our words but by our deeds.
Blessed are You, Who orders and rules the universe, Your Name is Goodness,
it is fitting to give You prayers of gratitude and praise.