"What Have We to Be Thankful For?"

Rev. Dr. Joshua Snyder, November 18, 2001

The Buddhist teacher Sylvia Boorstein once wrote that the greatest prayer that anyone has ever said is "Thank you."  Thanksgiving is this week, and it is a time when many of us throughout our community and our country will say what they are thankful for, or at least contemplate it.  This is also the time of year where we do the "Guest at Your Table" boxes, sponsored by the RE Committee.  The Guest at Your Table boxes are a fundraising program of the Unitarian Universalist Service Committee (UUSC).  This morning I would like to talk with you a bit about what the UUSC does, and why it is relevant to this time of the year.

The UUSC started out as the "Unitarian Service Committee," just prior to the Second World War.  The Unitarian Service Committee gained some notoriety at the time, because it and the Quaker Service Committee were two of the very few organizations that were active in getting Jews out of Nazi occupied Germany.  This was one of the early efforts to save the Jewish people, and many historians have noted the foresight of the Unitarian Service Committee to that problem.  An article in the old Christian Register (the Unitarian journal which was one of the forerunners of UU World) gave an account of how this was done.  According to the report, Jews were being smuggled out of Germany and France into Switzerland under foreign passports.  The article gave a good deal of detail on how this was done and even interviewed some of the people who had set up this "underground railroad."  Unfortunately this article was a bit too through.  After it was published the Service Committee found that its cover had been blown, and had to resort to other means of getting people out of the country.  That is hard-hitting Unitarian journalism, the likes of which we have not seen lately.  This story of heroism sounds like something out of a John Le Carre novel, but they are true; Unitarians of the past did these things.  I would like to think that so would we if history made such a demand upon us.

I often think back to what it must have been like for those lucky few that escaped the clutches of the Nazis reign of terror.  How grateful they must have been for being released from that awful situation.  That sense of gratitude is something that you or I may never experience in our lives.  These people were surely thankful for the aid that they received, but more so than the material benefits there may have been, they were most likely thankful for life.  They had been given again the gift of life, which most people take for granted, but it is a gift.  That profound sense of thankfulness, for the very air we breathe, and for the healing words and helping hands of others is what the Thanksgiving holiday is all about.

Too often I think that sometimes people are thankful for all of the stuff they have.  We have more money and goods and services than many other countries in the world do, this is true.  The UUSC is dedicated to giving food and medicine and other desperately needed supplies to ver needy countries in the world.  The children of Afghanistan will be receiving all of the money donated this year by our children during their worship services downstairs.  The UUSC, in addition also goes to India and Africa and South America where schools need supplies and people need the basics to live.  There was a big effort a couple of years ago to help the victims of Hurricane Mitch in Central America and the devastating Earthquake in Turkey.  The UUSC also assists inner city poverty in this country.  One of their newest programs is youth camps where youth can go and work for a few weeks.  They do one in the host-city during every General Assembly.  Giving of these badly needed material things is fundamentally important.

And yet there is more to it than that I think.  It is true that America has a great deal of wealth compared to other countries, but there are things we lack as well; things that we need assistance with.  The Dalai Lama has noted this in his many travels to America, as we see in today's reading.  Compared with America, Tibet is impoverished, especially since the Chinese occupation.  However, the Dalai Lama relates that when he speaks with Westerners, both Buddhists and intellectuals interested in Buddhism, he finds that many of them suffer from poor self-esteem.  At first this confused him.  No one in Tibet, at least not until its introduction to the modern world, had ever suffered from poor self-esteem.  If anyone did think poorly of himself or herself, the Dalai Lama says, everyone might laugh.  The notion that one person is unworthy or unimportant is so ludicrous in their culture that they find it amusing.  Of course this is not funny.  The Tibetans would also say that if seriously felt so poorly about yourself that you were suffering from a powerful form of delusion.  And while life is by no means a picnic on the Tibetan Plateau, they would not beat themselves up about their own misfortune.  There is a spiritual fortitude among these and other so-called "primitive" cultures that we would do well to learn.

Our impoverishment may not be in the material sense, but in our ways of treating each other, our cultural notions of a rugged individualism, our feelings of isolation from each other, and our desire to create a virtual facsimile of the world as opposed to living in the one we actually occupy.  The things we need in today's world are immaterial, but they are still there and can still be sensed.  There have been too many Christmases where I have experienced a Charlie Brown-like disillusionment in the commercialism and materialism of that holiday.  Not because I did not get good presents that year, but because these are shallow values, and I believe that Thanksgiving calls to something deeper within us.  Thanksgiving is the time for us to reflect and to count our blessings.

What healing and hopeful words have you received in this past year?  How many have you given to others?  These are the things that I am really thankful for.  It is the small moments of life that inspire me and make me grateful that I am alive.  There are times during a dramatic sunset or even just walking outside of my apartment first thing in the morning and breathing in the fresh air, that I am truly grateful for my life.  It happens only for a moment before I get into my car, but I try telling myself to remember this feeling, on this day. So when it comes to the end of my life, I will be thankful for the memories of having seen and experienced something truly wonderful.  I can never know what it must have felt like to have escaped certain death in Germany in a culture gone mad.  But I can imagine a feeling of deep and profound gratitude for being given one more day or one more year, to experience another brisk fall morning walking to my car.  How thankful would I be on that day?  How thankful were those people that the UUSC saved so many years ago?  How thankful are their children and grandchildren; for they too were saved by our Service Committee?  They were given an extremely powerful healing and hopeful hand.

Though I dare not compare it to the experiences of a Holocaust survivor, I was given this profound gift recently.  Last month many of you may remember I traveled to New England for about a week.  While I was there I visited with my friends Jodi and Michael who live in central Maine.  One fine day last month, I went Michael up to an organic farm that he occasionally works on.  This farm grows many crops, but apples were on everyone's mind that time of year.  So he and I went out to the East orchard to pick "drops."  Drops are apples that have fallen from the trees.  For the most part these are perfectly good apples, given a washing under the tap.  However, there are animals of the forest that do their business on the ground near the apple trees, and any apple that falls there would not likely make good eating in neither hand nor pie!  But as I said they are perfectly good apples, and we were collecting them in a large crate to make cider.  This part of Maine is the same latitude as Green Bay Wisconsin, and the air was crisp as dusk descended.  As we trudged out to orchard, it dawned on me how long it had been since I had spent some significant time outdoors.  It was wonderful.  Being an organic farm, horses are fundamental to its operation.  As I walked by the stable I smelled the horses and their hay.  Perhaps not a pleasant smell to some people, but for me it took me back to time when I was very small and our family lived on my grandfather's farm.  He raised horses and ponies, and I often played in the barn as a boy.  Smelling those horses, I felt like I was five years old again.  

As Michael and I picked apples we talked.  We must have talked for hours.  We spoke of our families, of our fathers, of our relationships, and of our future.  We shared many intimate and important things to each other.  It felt so good to be able to communicate with someone so fully and openly.  It is a very satisfying feeling.  Michael and I would joke later to Jodi that we had our own private Men's Group out there among the apples.  Something about the air, the smells, and the talk of close friends, stirred something in me; something deep within my soul that has not been touched in a long time.  I cannot describe it you fully, but it is there, it has always been there, and I need to get in touch with it more often.  Somehow I feel less attuned to it now than in the past, but no longer.  I just know that for my own health I need to return to the wildness and naturalness of life.  My heart, mind, body, and soul all need this.  They need the nourishment that only a connection to nature, and to other people, could provide.  
That is what I am thankful for.  That was the healing word that I needed without even knowing it.  It is something that I could not buy, nor could I sell it if I wanted to.  I would not be able to export it to anther country in need of it.  It is just a profound sense of my own being.  It is a revelation of how lucky and fortunate I am to be alive.  There is a Zen Master who once said, "Everyday is a fine, fine day."  He too had that feeling of being exactly who you are.  Thankfulness is the best prayer the world has ever known.
Of course we should give to countries in need; I think this is very important work.  There is a wide spread and alarming need for material things such as aid, food, and medical supplies.  I am also not suggesting that the UUSC or some other organization should try to trick people into conversion through the manipulation of relief.  Rather, I hope that the folks of the Unitarian Universalist Service Committee, and all Unitarian Universalists, would come to see our gifts as being more than mere quarters in a box.  There is something deeper there at work.  There are symbolic meanings of this act, which can be difficult to grasp.  The food and gifts we give are material, but they are also more than material.  They carry with them great significance to the people who receive this aid.  They are matters of life and death.  I will never forget the scene in Schindler's List where Ben Kinsley completes the list of Jews who will be saved from certain death in the concentration camps.  He holds up the piece of paper and says, "The List is life, and all around it is death."  Our humble gifts may seem small from our perspective, but to the people who open these boxes, they are the difference between life and death.
Please be mindful of this when you put your quarters in the Guest at Your Table boxes.  Do not mindlessly place money into them as if they were a flimsy piggy bank.  Take a moment and think about this act.  Make it a ritual in your house that includes the whole family.  I will admit to you that I cheat a little when it comes to Guest at Your Table boxes.  After I hand in my money, I keep an extra box that no one has taken.  I place this box on my altar at home, and when I am done with my meditation in the morning I place some money in the box.  I use it all year round so that my meditation can bear tangible fruits in the outside world.  Now that being said, I have been known to make change in the Guest at Your Table box when I have to do my laundry, but I just replace the coins with bills!  In either case, make this something special.  Tie it into your religious faith and use it as an opportunity to share your beliefs with your family.  Let the kids share too.  I know for a fact that there is a lot of wisdom there.
Being mindful of the need around the world, an in our own community, should not make us feel guilty.  Anyone who has earned their money in an honest way has no reason to feel guilty about it.  I know most of the people in here, and I know you all work hard.  Instead, awareness of suffering should arouse in us compassion and the desire to be of service.  The bodhisattva is one who wishes that all being would be happy, whether they need food or self-esteem.  It is not just money that we are giving.  We are giving hope and life to people.  We should also feel free to give to one another words of healing and kindness.  These are tremendous gifts that we have to be thankful for.  Try to count these as you sit around the Thanksgiving table this week.
The Father of American Universalism, John Murray, once said, "Give them not hell, but hope and courage."  You may not see these things going into your box, but the person who takes the money out, and the people who receive it surly will.  There are many intangibles in those boxes that only when we are quiet and mindful do we have ears to hear and eyes to see.  Give words of joy and compassion to others freely, for they are the things we are truly thankful for.  I give thanks for my friends, for my family, for my Church community, and for the hope of peace.
May all of us give and receive the gifts of life with open hearts.  May we count as rich those who have much love and gratitude.  May we seek always to be people who say "thank you."  Amen Blessed Be.