Approaching Thanks giving

Thanksgiving is late this year, so, of course, retailers are holding Christmas sales early. Instead of ranting about that, today we would rather focus on a bunch of things for which we should, and too often don't, give thanks. In fact, we may even try to honor the spirit of the emergent season and refrain from, or at least limit, our frequent focus on what's wrong with the world. We have much more to be thankful for than is listed below. These are but the first steps in a journey to the Thanksgiving holiday later this month.

wolf statue, American Indian Cultural Corridor, Minneapolis

Photo by J. Harrington

• We're grateful that we have the family and friends, two and four-legged, we've be able to share our life with.


• We're thankful we live in a country that hasn't (yet) repealed the Endangered Species Act.


• Despite the increasing incivility of our politics, we're thankful we don't (yet) live in an actual war zone.


• We're thankful there's still some time to craft and implement adequate and effective responses to greenhouse gas emissions so we can limit the disruptions we caused by breaking the climate.


• We're thankful and hopeful there may be enough intelligent, sane, beneficent people to actually craft and implement all the actions necessary to limit and Drawdown greenhouse gas emissions and adapt to the effects we can't avoid.


• We're thankful there are Native Americans willing and able to show and teach us how to live sustainably on earth, our home planet.


• We're thankful the Native Americans who encountered the Pilgrims at Plymouth Rock didn't treat those English immigrants the way the current regime and many of our fellow Americans(?) treat those trying to come here to live a better life. The original Americans didn't arrive on the Mayflower, they were here already to greet a ship full of emigrants from England.


• We're thankful that Birchbark Books and other independent book stores are within easy driving distance.


• We're thankful that National Geographic, Catherine O’Neill Grace, Sisse Brimberg, and Plimoth Plantation have put together a more balanced story of "1621, the first Thanksgiving."


• November is Native American Heritage Month. We're thankful for that and that this year the United States Poet Laureate is Joy Harjo, a member of the Mvskoke/Creek Nation and that she writes poems like the one below.

Art from Indian Territory (Oklahoma) poster

Photo by J. Harrington

This Morning I Pray for My Enemies

Joy Harjo - 1951-

And whom do I call my enemy?
An enemy must be worthy of engagement.
I turn in the direction of the sun and keep walking.
It’s the heart that asks the question, not my furious mind.
The heart is the smaller cousin of the sun.
It sees and knows everything.
It hears the gnashing even as it hears the blessing.
The door to the mind should only open from the heart.
An enemy who gets in, risks the danger of becoming a friend.

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