Gratitude.
It's fitting that a nation founded on rights, which are
personal entitlements, should pause once a year to cultivate the
opposite emotion.
Yes, I'm thankful: that, for all its undoubted flaws,
something as mysteriously wonderful as America should really
exist. Also that for no good reason I can see, I, of all the 6
billion people on this Earth, should be one of those lucky enough
to inherit this nation. I'm grateful to all those who gave this
gift to me, from the first Pilgrim souls searching to build a new
heaven on Earth, to the Deist Thomas Jefferson methodically
stripping his Bible of every evidence of the miraculous.
This original tension between Athens and Jerusalem (reason and
faith) -- out of which much of Western civilization, but most
especially America, was formed -- is still very much with us.
Case in point: This month the Salk Institute for Biological
Studies in La Jolla, Calif., held a forum on science and
religion, which (according to The New York Times) "began to
resemble the founding convention for a political party built on a
single plank: In a world dangerously charged with ideology,
science needs to take on an evangelical role, vying with religion
as teller of the greatest story ever told." (See it at www.tsntv.org).
The scientists at this conference were almost all atheists or
agnostics. They pose as strong men of Athens, but in the intense,
lively, fascinating anger at religious influence, their clay feet
keep peeping out: in the deep discontent some displayed with
merely doing science as a rational activity, in their need to
find a greater meaning and purpose, and in their strong human
desire not only to proclaim the truth, but to suppress people and
ideas that they feel threaten their founding truths.