Thanksgivings...

Some works of art that help me give thanks...

Dear Friends,

I took the above picture last year when visiting my sister for Thanksgiving in Sussex. I love it because one of the bushes looks like a pensive lion gazing at the river and sunset. Perhaps he is thinking about what he is thankful for. Perhaps he is feeling he has eaten too much turkey. We can all relate. At least I know I can after the sumptuous feast I fed upon two days ago. It was my first Thanksgiving back in Colorado since 2015. I am happy and thankful to be here.

In keeping with my commonplace format, I wanted to share a pieces of writing, music, and art surrounding the theme of thanksgiving. The first is a poem by e.e. cummings. I associate this poem with springtime. I first heard it in a garden with my Masters cohort. Our lecturer (who would eventually be my PhD advisor) held class outside one on unseasonably warm day in April, fed us millionaire bites and red this. So I associate it with spring green, and yellow rapeseed fields, and blue skies. But I decided to post it today because it is about giving thanks and I find so many of the other “Thanksgiving” poems a bit to sweet for my taste…

“i thank You God for most this amazing” by E. E. Cummings

i thank You God for most this amazing
day:for the leaping greenly spirits of trees
and a blue true dream of sky;and for everything
which is natural which is infinite which is yes

(i who have died am alive again today,
and this is the sun’s birthday;this is the birth
day of life and of love and wings:and of the gay
great happening illimitably earth)

how should tasting touching hearing seeing
breathing any—lifted from the no
of all nothing—human merely being
doubt unimaginable You?

(now the ears of my ears awake and
now the eyes of my eyes are opened)

Here’s the poem himself reading it.

how should tasting touching hearing seeing
breathing any—lifted from the no
of all nothing—human merely being
doubt unimaginable You?

It is a wonderful line isn’t it? For some reason, I always associate it with the yellow rapeseed fields of Scotland in May. This year I walked through them… even though they make me sneeze, they are beautiful.

I want to share two songs, in very different registers:

“Love Theory” by Kirk Franklin and “The Gift” by Jon Foreman.

Let’s start with Kirk Franklin: