It's Thanksgiving!

IT’S THANKSGIVING 2011!

And I am deeply grateful. Most of all for the “Gift of Life!”

I am!

However the Pseudo Sophisticates -- the alleged “wise,” -- choose to analyze, or “demythologize, or discredit the idea, I am experiencing something real even as I think and write this very moment.

Some time ago – I don’t remember when – I wakened in the night. There was nothing but darkness and frantic terror! Then it was gone! I was wide awake and shaken!

The rest of the night I contemplated the prospect of dwelling in darkness. I struggled with the thought of “not being.” But, with that thought came the realization that even an existence without light would, still, “an existence be.” A “dagger of the mind,” “proceeding from the heat oppressed brain,” or not, would still be a “dagger” to the person who sees it. My “contemplation,” all by itself, was, for me, a form of being. In that moment a very reassuring semblance of existence! To imagine “not being” was impossible because to “not be” would expunge the imagining itself. Without the “Gift of Life” there would be no consciousness at all!

That night I learned to value “thinking” and what an important role our thoughts play in our existence. Then and there I resolved to take an Ancestor’s advice seriously; to “think about” things that are “true and noble; right and pure; lovely and admirable; virtuous; deserving praise and honor; the kinds of things great yet humble minds contemplate.” I remembered God’s word to Asaph. “Those who bring thanksgiving as a sacrifice honor me!” (Ps. 50: 23 NRSV)

Since then I have determined to think thankfully, routinely. How amazing this “Gift of Life” becomes when we see our “being” as the “bountiful care,” of an extravagant Benefactor! Life’s pure and spontaneous pleasures,” writes C. S. Lewis, “are ‘patches of Godlight’ in the woods of our existence.”

This “Thanksgiving Week” I’ve decided to share, with anyone who reads these “Weekly Life Words,” daily “patches of Godlight.” Tasty delights along the “Way of Life.”