A Thanksgiving flashback, after another sobering year

Giving thanks, with the help of Orthodox liturgy, The Free Press and even Ayaan Hirsi Ali

Folks, this flashback post is going to be rather personal.

Truth is, I cannot help it. I am heading into Thanksgiving 2024 truly shocked at all that has happened during the past year. I will not wade into details, other than saying that I feel like I have aged — for a number of health-related reasons — more in the past 12 months than in the previous decade.

It’s been quite a shock, even though I know that all of this is rather normal (here comes that phrase doctors keep using) for a “man of my age.” It’s going to take some time, and medical tests, to sort out some of the rather ordinary, but sobering, details. A poorly timed kidney stone (I have endured quite a few) was the least of my worries.

However, my point here is to give thanks. Thus, I am opening this Wednesday post to all Rational Sheep readers.

A quarter of a century ago, during a truly terrible year in my professional life, my Orthodox priest was very kind and helped me through that struggle. But the most important thing he did was tell me — every time that I went to confession — to begin by describing the many things in my life for which I needed to give thanks. That was the correct lens for that year.

OK, what about 2024?

I’ll start here, in the world of headlines and private life: I am thankful for the beauty of God’s creation here in the Southern Highlands of Northeast Tennessee and Western North Carolina, even as the resilient people here struggle with the effects of flooding and devastation that was truly historic.

The Hurricane Helene disaster has affected our move back to the Tri-Cities of Tennessee and Virginia in many ways — even though I know that my family’s troubles are a tiny fraction of the pain and loss felt by others. For example, I am thankful for flood insurance. So many people in this region do not have flood insurance, in part because there was — in their specific towns and neighborhoods — no statistical reason to justify paying for it.

Being thankful for flood insurance was not on my 2024 bingo card.

When I say that I am thankful for the wonder of living in the Southern Highlands, that is something that I totally expected to be able say as we headed into this Nativity Lent season. But I did not expect to offer that word of thanksgiving with a lump in my throat, gazing at the mountains day after day with a sense of loss as well as wonder. But that’s reality, isn’t it?

Here’s another example of the sobering blessings of 2024.

I am thankful for the 20 years of work published by the GetReligion.org team, even as I mourn many of the economic and tech trends that have warped and even crushed the old-school professional standards that shaped my vocation in journalism (for more on that, click here).

Ah, but it was the rise of the Internet age that made the GetReligion blog possible in the first place and, now, evolving online-publishing models have allowed me to create Rational Sheep (returning to subjects explored in Denver Seminary classrooms long ago). I am very thankful for readers who are supporting this project with their time, attention and subscriptions.

I would go on and on. What I would like to do is return to Thanksgiving 2023, offering current readers a chance to see something that I wrote at GetReligion.org — after the holiday prayers and feasting.

Yes, there was a mixture of loss and thanksgiving a year ago, as well. The headline: “Personal note, and post-Thanksgiving thinking from The Free Press: 'What We're Grateful For'.” Please listen to some of the music in the YouTube attachment!

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How was your Thanksgiving? Mine was pretty serious, although it really helped to spend it with a circle of friends from the thriving St. Anne Orthodox Church here in Oak Ridge, Tenn. It was a day to give thanks — including for the life and witness of a dear friend, David Waite, who died recently.

This made me think of the days when David, in the middle of a long fight with cancer, was completely locked down (for obvious reasons) during COVID-tide. We saw him during Zoom classes, but missed him during worship services, even when they were held outdoors (think Holy Week in a revival tent). And David missed a Thanksgiving service that he dearly loved.

This leads me to an “On Religion” column that I wrote during that time about the Orthodox Akathist of Thanksgiving (see the YouTube with this post), a litany of poetic Russian prayers created during hellish persecution by the Bolsheviks (.pdf here). Here is some key material from that column:

An "akathist" is a service honoring a saint, a holy season or the Holy Trinity. Many trace this akathist to the scholarly Metropolitan Tryphon, a well-known spiritual father at the height of the persecution. The version of the service used today was found in the personal effects of Father Gregory Petrov, who died in 1940 in a concentration camp.

It is also important that "Glory to God in all things" were the last words spoken by St. John Chrysostom, the famous preacher and archbishop of Constantinople who died in 407 after being forced into imprisonment and exile by his critics.

Later, there is this:

The service offers thanksgiving for many kinds of gifts and events in life, from the moonlight in which "nightingales sing" to valleys and hills that "lieth like wedding garments, white as snow." Worshippers offer thanksgiving for the "humbleness of the animals which serve me," as well as "artists, poets and scientists," because the "power of Thy supreme knowledge maketh them prophets and interpreters of Thy laws."

But near the end, a priest chants the crucial theme: "How near Thou art in the day of sickness. Thou Thyself visitest the sick; Thou Thyself bendest over the sufferer's bed. His heart speaks to Thee. In the throes of sorrow and suffering Thou bringest peace and unexpected consolation."

Needless to say, I was thinking of my friend David when chanting those lines this Thanksgiving. So that is one part of this … “think piece” collection.

The other is the set of Thanksgiving notes — “What We’re Grateful For” — published at The Free Press.

The thesis statement was, “gratitude is underrated — and more necessary than ever, given the sorry state of the world.”

Read it all, but here are samples that suggest the range of the whole piece:

* Walter Kirn, novelist and occasional Free Press columnist

I’m grateful that I stopped in time. I’m grateful that I forgave before it was too late. I’m grateful for all the close calls that I survived so I could still be here with my wife, my kids, my friends, and my teachers and guides, without whom I’d be lost. I’m grateful that I still have so much to learn.

* Jonathan Haidt, social psychologist and author

In recent weeks I have often thought about how lucky I am that all four of my grandparents made it out of Eastern Europe and to the United States, all around 1907. Even with the rise of blatant antisemitism on college campuses and in some cities, I know that America is, overall, a philosemitic country (one in which Jews are rated very positively). I am grateful for strong shows of support for Israel and for American Jews from President Biden, Mayor Eric Adams, and many other leaders. I am thankful that of all the places, times, and roles one could be born into, I was born a Jewish American in 1963.

* Evan Gardner, Free Press intern and senior at Brown

This year, I’m especially thankful for poems. I never really appreciated them until this year, but I am thankful for their small moments of beauty for beauty’s sake in the midst of so much violence and conflict.

* Margi Conklin, managing editor, The Free Press

I am grateful for the Shawangunk Mountains, which lie just 15 minutes from my home in upstate New York. Every weekend it’s my jungle gym, where I walk and talk with my husband, hoist myself up ridges, inhale fresh air, and realize — amid eagles and squirrels and the occasional bear — that our human concerns are only a tiny part of this rock we’re spinning on. I’ve been hiking for two decades now, and I know I’ll be doing it for as long as I can breathe and put one foot in front of the other. Hiking is my sanity.

As a finale, there is also this (which is linked to a conversion that, here at GetReligion, we believe is rather newsworthy):

* Ayaan Hirsi Ali, author and Hoover Institution fellow

I am thankful to be in my right mind. Sane, clear-headed, and connected to my family and friends. Connected, too, to the causes I care about.

Last year, this time, I was in a place of darkness. I felt small, scared, and alone. I shrank away from love. I trusted no one. I felt lost and longed for oblivion.

It took time, and the unconditional support of my husband, children, and my friends, who simply refused to leave me alone. Most important of all it took surrender to God to get here, to allow myself to feel at peace with Him.

Read it all. It’s never too late to be thankful.