Thanksgiving

A short story for Thanksgiving...

A young man named John received a parrot as a gift.
The parrot had a bad attitude and an even worse vocabulary.

Every word out of the bird's' mouth was rude, obnoxious and laced with profanity.
John tried and tried to change the bird's attitude by consistently saying only polite words,

playing soft music and anything else he could think of to 'clean up' the bird's vocabulary.

Finally, John was fed up and he yelled at the parrot. The parrot yelled back. John shook the parrot
and the parrot got angrier and even more rude. John, in desperation, threw up his hand, grabbed
the bird and put him in the freezer. For a few minutes the parrot squawked and kicked and screamed.

Then suddenly there was total quiet. Not a peep was heard for over a minute.

Fearing that he'd hurt the parrot, John quickly opened the door to the freezer.
The parrot calmly stepped out onto John's outstretched arms and said

"I believe I may have offended you with my rude language and actions.
I'm sincerely remorseful for my inappropriate transgressions and I fully intend to do
everything I can to correct my rude and unforgivable behavior."

John was stunned at the change in the bird's attitude.

As he was about to ask the parrot what had made such a dramatic change in his behavior,
the bird spoke-up, very softly, "May I ask what the turkey did?"

Hope you have a "wonderfull" day and that you experience moments of peace and joy whomever you share your time with...

Thanksgiving

5 Ways to celebrate a Thankful Thanksgiving....

From Busted Halo:

“Thanksgiving Day is coming; gobble, gobble, gobble. Lets give thanks for this day!”

These words are a remnant of the only song about Thanksgiving I remember from my childhood. My family had the main Thanksgiving meal at one grandma’s house in a New Jersey city, then we would pile into my dad’s big Chevy and rumble across the swamps and oil refinery fields to my other grandma’s for dessert. Thanksgiving was a moderately fun holiday. We’d watch football games. My teenage cousin would impress me and disgust everyone else with his uncanny ability to chug creamed corn. Yet Thanksgiving is the single event where I rack up the greatest number of deadly sins: gluttony, sloth, envy (I wish I had that drumstick!) and pride (Why isn’t anyone eating the cookies I made?!) Dante would have a field day imagining the cosmic justice I’m due for my days of apple cider-fueled hedonism. Most probably, it would involve turkeys getting revenge by gobbling Creed songs. Maybe it’s time to celebrate Thanksgiving as it was intended.
The traditional notion about Thanksgiving is one of family bonding, warmth and giving to the less fortunate. Sadly, this is lost because Thanksgiving occupies an awkward position in the pantheon of national holidays — kind of a highway rest stop for us to eat and catch our collective breath before spending the next month in a hectic Jingle-Belled craze. Most American schoolchildren are taught the story of the first Thanksgiving in 1621, complete with paper plate turkey (though tempered by the fact that the European colonists would soon throw their native hosts off their land.) Thanksgiving has survived for the whole of the nation’s history. President Abraham Lincoln gave the day its familiar characteristics in the midst of the Civil War. It is sad we have gotten so far from the traditional approach to the day, so I offer these five relatively easy suggestions to make your turkey daymore spiritually fulfilling.

1. Actually give thanks — Many of us treat the Thanksgiving meal like a sports event. We restlessly wait for the food to be placed on the table so the gorging can begin. Conversation dies down to nothing and we communicate in a series of grunts and dirty looks. A way to correct this is to actually give thanks to a higher power for another year. Take time before the meal to go around the table and think of something you are thankful for. It doesn’t have to be overtly religious — just a simple time for reflection about the things you were lucky enough to receive. Don’t feel guilty if you can’t think of some deep philosophical thing to give thanks for; this year I plan to give thanks that dogs continue to be cuter then cats.
2. Help out — Many families celebrate Thanksgiving like the movie Groundhog Day, with the same family members doing the same things every year. If you aren’t normally one of the people who helps prepare the meal and set the table, peel yourself away from the sofa and start peeling potatoes. Even if it shakes a few branches in your family tree, stop watching football for 20 minutes and fill salt shakers. It’s good karma to help prepare the meal you are about to eat. My personal job is preparing drinks for the older people in my family. Most likely, anything you do to help will be appreciated.
3. Look around — The greatest cause of stress and joy for many in life is family and friends. Often, Thanksgiving brings together people who haven’t been in each other’s company for months or even years. When you are all together, take time to look around and soak in everyone’s collective aura. The old cliché that life is too short is absolutely true. Anything can happen between this turkey day and the next. It may be fun to gossip about how a friend looks or lay scorn on a relative you don’t like, but in the end it isn’t worth it. This is the tip I am most passionate about and it is also the easiest to accomplish. All you have to do is simply be aware of everyone’s presence and think about your own place in the family. Last Thanksgiving, my dad sat next to me and chatted about an ancestor he had known who’d been born in 1885. On my dad’s other side was a cousin who was born in 2006. That simple fact floored me. I reflected on and prayed about how short our time here really is, and how we simply must appreciate our time in the great human experiment. Do not take your time with anyone for granted or assume it’s never-ending. Holidays are chances to forge good memories; don’t waste the opportunity.
4. Play a game — One of the great joys in life is playing a game. I know many friends who gather around Thanksgiving to play tackle football or go out for karaoke. Maybe it is time for you to start a fun new Thanksgiving tradition. If you are blessed with some time off, couple that with the fact that friends and family are around and plan a really fun event. You could run a Turkey Trot 5K or simply invite old friends over to watch a movie. Take advantage of the time to reconnect and swap fond memories; catching a touchdown pass is an added bonus.
5. Help – Soup kitchens and food pantries are packed to the gills on Thanksgiving with well-intentioned people looking to help their fellow man. If your local soup kitchen needs help, by all means help them out. But otherwise, while this is certainly admirable, consider other things you can do. In this economy, many charitable organizations are scrambling for donations or food supplies that can last them through times when people aren’t as well-intentioned. Why not organize a food drive or donating money with your friends and family.

Hopefully these tips will encourage you to find new ways to center yourself and gain understanding of your place with friends and family this Thanksgiving, and make it more than a rest stop between holidays. Just don’t fill up on apple cider: my grandma says you will get a tummy ache.

For the cooks...

Thanksgiving is centered around family and the meal! The youth of our church hold an annual fund raiser selling Thanksgiving Desserts (to take a little of the burden off the cooks) and tonight, We Bake!

The kitchen at church will be filled with the smells associated with the season...pumpkin, cinnamon, nutmeg, vanilla...all those fragrances that seem to wrap their warm arms around us. We will end the evening lifting up a prayer for all the cooks who put their hearts into the meal because they are serving the people they love. Thanks be to God for all of them! And thanks be to God for food to eat, a room to eat in and loved ones to share it with.

My daughter has served in the Navy for 9+ years now. During her first Thanksgiving she was stationed far away from us (although still in the US) and a local family invited her over to share their meal. She called me afterwards to tell how their traditions were similar and how much she enjoyed her time with them. I don't know their names but thank you whoever you are, she still remembers after all these years.

If there is someone in your community destined to eat alone, open your doors and your hearts and set one more place at the table. Believe me, you will be the ones who feel blessed!

A Pilgrim Daughter

Story by Dr. Ralph Wilson...

We searched for the ghost of fifteen-year-old Constance Hopkins in the bowels of the reconstructed ship "Mayflower II," rolling gently aside a pier in Plymouth harbor. Where volunteers dressed in period costume answered tourists' questions, Constance had once huddled, miserably cold and damp, as fierce storms buffeted the ship.

"According to the usuall manner," the old records relate, "many were afflicted with seasicknes." As the ship had only the crudest of conveniences and no sanitary facilities of any kind except the traditional bucket, the air in the narrow, crowded quarters below deck must have been nauseating at worst and at best simply staggering.

Constance and her younger brother were responsible to keep track of their three-year-old sister who was always scampering among the various families camped side by side in the hold's cargo compartments. It was all their mother could do, great with child, to brace herself as the "Mayflower" heaved in the heavy Atlantic storms. As Constance watched a tiny brother was born on the high seas, christened "Oceanus."

Since the "Mayflower" had left England nine weeks behind schedule, the New World's harsh weather threatened their very survival. The men went ashore in December to construct rude shelters; women and children spent the winter aboard ship anchored in the bay.

Winter took its toll. Journal entries feature the same melancholy theme week after week, for months on end:

"... Aboute noone, it began to raine ... at night, it did freeze & snow ... still the cold weather continued ... very wet and rainy, with the greatest gusts of wind ever we saw ... frost and foule weather hindered us much; this time of the yeare seldom could we worke half the week."

That winter more than half the heads of households perished. Aboard ship only five of eighteen wives lived through the ravages of scurvy, pneumonia, and tuberculosis. An entry for March 24th reads:

"Dies Elizabeth, the wife of Mr. Edward Winslow. N.B. This month thirteen of our number die. And in three months past dies halfe our company ... Of a hundred persons, scarce fifty remain, the living scarce able to bury the dead."

My daughter Annie, a descendent of Constance, tried to imagine the terrors of that winter for a young teenage girl. When not lying sick herself, she would doubtless be tending whimpering children, preparing food for their stricken mothers, and comforting the increasing number of orphans aboard the "Mayflower."

But spring finally came, and by the third week in March the weakened survivors rowed ashore in the longboat to take up residence in New Plimoth.

How could the Pilgrims talk about thanksgiving in the midst of life's most difficult trials? we wonder. Why not just curse God and die? They gave thanks for God's presence in their adversities because they knew that struggles did not have to make them bitter; struggles could make them better. These remaining Pilgrim daughters and sons, mothers and fathers, placed their trust in their God and laid the enduring foundations of a nation. Thanksgiving Day, 1621, did not just celebrate wild turkey and Indian corn; it celebrated the human spirit reaching out to God in gratitude for the blessings the Pilgrims still did possess.

"Yea, though they should lose their lives in this action," ancient documents say, "yet they might have comforte in the same ... All great & honourable actions are accompanied with great difficulties, and must be both enterprised and overcome with answerable courages."

No, the Pilgrims did not lack for courage.

Our family poked around in a windswept burying yard until we found the tombstone of Constance Hopkins Snow, age 72 years. And as my wife and daughter laid a bunch of hedge row wildflowers on her grave, we stood for a moment of silence, meditating on our brave and very personal link with that first Thanksgiving.

I had the great, good fortune to visit the Mayflower II several years ago. As I wandered the decks and spoke with the period actors, I was truly amazed that 103 passengers (not including the crew) could survive for 66 days in such cramped quarters on the raging, merciless Atlantic ocean. We could all learn a lesson from their faith and courage.