A Meditation for Thanksgiving (One Day Late)

This morning’s email included an eloquent Thanksgiving meditation from Rabbi Michael Lerner, editor of Tikkun magazine. (I can’t find it on the Tikkun website; if you’d like a copy, email me.) He encouraged his readers to respond with their own meditations. Having just returned from South Africa—and seen the brutal poverty that still plagues so many of its people—I found the following response recurring in my thoughts during Thanksgiving Day.

To the One Who provides all things:

“Thank you for this food” is such a throwaway phrase. Yet here, now, on this Thanksgiving, I see the why behind it. I have met people who struggle to put even a daily meal on their tables, let alone “three squares.” I have seen the places where hunger haunts those who have so long felt the haunt of oppression. The memory of them makes the feast before me an embarrassment. Yet this feast is Your gift to me, just as their memory is Your gift to me. I bless you for both: the abundance You share with me and those I love, the common humanity that binds me with the hungry ones. May my remembrance of each—and my gratitude for both—never cease.