Another prayer

A prayer for Thanksgiving

Eternal One, we give thanks this day for all the goodness and kindness of this year, and for the illness and madness too, for in the darkness we are reminded of light, and in the agony of our days the ecstasy quickens and provides deeper meaning.

We give thanks for the food on our tables, and for those who have prepared our feast, but also for those who labor without thanks to raise and harvest and transport — for the farmers and the threshers and the pickers and the drivers and all those who provide the food chain. May they be met with kindness, with living wages, with health care worthy of their dignity.

We give thanks for the walls that surround us, for homes lit and heated and cooled for our comfort. May we be diligent in curing our insatiable energy consumption. May we save this planet for our grandchildren and generations beyond. This fragile earth is our island home; we acknowledge it is but entrusted to our care for a time.

We give thanks for a system of government that has worked for two centuries, and pray that a middle ground would again find its home in the halls of power. We lament our unhealthy divisions, and prayer for grace and common sense to prevail in the hearts and minds of our elected ones. We cry out for principled persons to do what is right without fear of the next election’s consequences.

We give thanks for the reminders that we must give, for we are surrounded by need and want and deprivation and poverty. We are a wealthy nation, but we are self-absorbed and deleterious in our regard for other nations and peoples around this globe. We have generations of sin for which we must atone, but the call to right goes unheeded.

We give thanks for the promise of tomorrow, of our next generation — a generation that shows such enlightened promise, but that may be handed a broken planet and a nation filled with civil strife. We pray that this new generation, born in a time of endless entertainment and instant communication, may rise to the challenge we will leave them, and not succumb to the tragedy that is not yet inevitable.

We give thanks, not enough, and likely not enough to feel an urge to change our ways, but we give thanks nonetheless, because we must, and because in giving thanks we acknowledge something greater than ourselves. So fill our souls with a sense of your greatness that we may find in this next year the urge to serve and be something greater than ourselves.

Amen.