Thanks Thoughts

 

It has been almost three years since all of our family has lived under one roof.  It’s a different time, a different age, a different season.  We’ve all changed.  Now as we reconnect we are forging new memories worthy of thanksgiving.

 

Presently I have listed 316 “gifts” on the way to 1000. It’s slow going.  At the current rate I’m on pace to complete it sometime in the year 2017.  Some of the most recent entries are: friends and family for Thanksgiving; cold crisp nights and bright stars; learning what you thought you already knew; epic stories; introduction to new worship music; playfulness; the quietness of a snow walk; randomness.  As I look over the list it’s interesting to note how much I value the gifts found in nature.  John Oxen brings out this nature theme and thanksgiving in the poem A Little Te Deum of the Commonplace.

 

For all the first flushings of the spring;

The greening earth, the tender heavenly blue;

The rich brown furrow gaping for the seed;

For all thy grace in bursting bud and leaf…

For hedgerows sweet and hawthorn and wild rose;

The meadows spread with gold and gemmed with stars,

For every tint of tiniest flower,

For every daisy smiling to the sun;

For every bird that builds in joyous hope,

For every lamb that frisks beside its dam,

For every leaf that rustles in the wind,

For spring poplar, and for spreading oak,

For queenly birch, and lofty swaying elm;

For the great cedar’s benedictory grace,

For earth’s ten thousand fragrant incenses,

Sweet altar-gifts from leaf and fruit and flower…

For ripening summer and the harvesting;

For all the rich autumnal glories spread –

The flaming pageant of the ripening woods,

The fiery gorse, the heather-purpled hills,

The rustling leaves that fly before the wind

and lie below the hedgerows whispering;

For the meadows silver-white with hoary dew;

For the sheer delight of tasting once again

That first crisp breath, of winter in the air;

The pictured pane; the new white world without;

The sparkling hedgerows witchery of lace,

The soft white flakes that fold the sleeping earth;

The cold without, the cheerier warmth within…

For all the glowing heart of Christmas-tide,

We thank thee, Lord!