Thanksgiving 2008

A lady to whom I was related, born in 1911, a time when a child was by no means assured a safe passage to maturity, was wont to tell her children the story of a convict she'd read about. This worthy had experienced in a single day the delirious joy of escaping the clutches of the FBI and the crash of expectations when he was recaptured and again the handcuffs went on. How'd he feel? The convict sighed: In this life you got to take the bad with the good. It struck the lady who told the story as deep, if accidental, wisdom. Yes, that was how it was: life as mixture of the sad and the sweet. You had to keep going, that was all.

Thankful for what? For numerous things, not all of them baked fresh and laid on the table. Among the rooted realities of our vexing time is human freedom and a larger abundance of human good will than we often think exists. It means there's the chance, always, to move from the sad to the sweet in a land blessed by a Creator who chastens those he loves: who won't, in mercy, spare them the emptiness of life lived without challenge, remorse and failure -- these being the great shapers of human achievement. We keep going, somehow, to the next Thanksgiving.