Recently here in Canada we celebrated Thanksgiving, our American brothers and sisters are looking forward to Thanksgiving, and in the Church we have just finished celebrating the Season of Creation, which in many ways is geared towards (take a guess!) thanksgiving.
For me personally I have been struggling with this season of joviality. I am quite a distance from my parents and siblings, and I am still settling into our relatively new town, our new family, and finding my place with my distant in-laws. I do not mean to be ungrateful, I have many blessings including a wonderful partner, children and even a couple of pets. I have a roof over my head, that doesn’t even leak, and there is always food on the table (even if it doesn’t get there until a late dinner hour). As a North American I have many possessions (some which are definitely frivolous), and in the case of my children often annoyingly underfoot. Yet, despite the warmth in my house (as the temperatures drop), food in the cupboard and all the other things around I do not much feel like celebrating.
There is tension within the liturigcal year of the Christian tradition that is often tugging at me. Often as the days get longer in the Season of Lent I am embracing the light and happy, even though it is a more sombre season. Here in the last days of Pentecost and in secular Thanksgiving times I am more aware of the earlier darkening evenings and darker early mornings. The feeling that underneath it all ‘winter is coming’. As I reflect today I am discovering how often for me personally, the seasons of the church year are a counter-balance to the world around us and within us. A way of tempering those ecstatic moments and uplifting those dreary days.
Today we heard the parable with the old woman and the unjust judge. A woman who was determined not to give up, and eventually is given what she demands. For me today, I wonder if it is possible to extend that to those of us who may not feel the way a particular season dictates. I wonder if it is an inspiration for us to keep working towards what would make the world, and my world, a place of joy and Thanksgiving. To be determined like the woman, to not accept these feelings of isolation and indifference, but in my own way be determined to find the things for which to give thanks. Although I may not have a dining room table surrounded with extended family, or laden with a turkey and side dishes; I do have a table and the potential to make friends as I settle in. Although I may not have a long list of things that are exciting in my life, I am alive and have the potential to do exciting things. While life may seem to have settled into a routine, there is a comfort in that, and the possibility to make those usual things sacred. Today, thanks to the woman in the parable I am reminded that I too must seek justice and thanksgiving, when it is not handed to me. To settle for the way things are after all would be to become the unjust judge.