Thankfulness. Is there a lack? Yesterday, after the slaughter of millions of obese turkeys to satisfy an in-born greed, we as a country slept on the doorsteps of malls and wal-marts– and what’s more, we weren’t alone. I wonder what drives obsession in us, as a society– and could it be that we are seeking our way back to center. To the center of humanity that is neither progress or digression– something animal, carnal, a beginning that links us to a neanderthal past.

Daily, I realize that my faith is not the faith taught in the Bible or other holy books. I sat next to my father during the last church service, while hymns spoke of harvest and thankfulness, and realized that I know so little of being thankful. Here is a man with a past. Age has given him the advantage of a past, and age has given him faith. He is alive for it, and not because of coincidence. I don’t have the faith of my father because I don’t have bullets littering my body and hunger– well, what is it to hunger?
There is a strong belief right now among the Christian right, that the world will be ending soon. “All the signs are there.” But it seems for some, time is the only cure for a faithless life. Experience is the only cure for a faithless life. I was thinking, that in the world of excess in which I live, I want to experience lack. I crave lack and deprivation. It seems unfair that the God I pray to would end the world, when he must have some understanding of how faith develops. Faith is a stone thrown into a river and only floods and the abrasive nature of silt and other stones round the edges. Without the possibility of learning, where is faith? And for those who never test their faith I wonder if faith is more a fear-built mechanism. We fear the eternal. Our fear thrives in the hell and damnation in sermons and scripture. The revolution of my faith is realizing that by testing faith and becoming a stronger believer in (whatever it might be), the stone on the rivers bottom grinds and shapes. All I can hope is that I have enough time to roll along the river-bottom to find out what it all means to me. Not what it means to everyone else. Me.
So for this Thanksgiving holiday I thought of things that I can truly be thankful for:
Personal development. I am excercising, seeing the value of health. I am falling in love, and seeing the interior of a human being who is as intriuged by my insights as I am his. I am learning, absorbing the literature of eternal poets (and this in a time when the average shelf life of a book is only five years). I am thankful that I have my father as an incredible symbol of faith, no matter what it might be and though I don’t know what faith is to him, because life can be much harder than this. Life should be much harder than this, and sometimes its a pity that it isn’t.