Here in Michigan, it is the season of harvest, the bounty of the summer’s growth overflowing the markets with vegetables and fruits. It is a time of thanksgiving when we celebrate earth’s joyful abundance. It is also an opportunity to turn, recognize and gather in the blessings of our lives, the blessings of family, of friends and community that hold us steady in the world. We look back on the past year and give thanks for all we have experienced and shared, sorting seed from chaff, drawing in the learning as seeds from which will grow the next steps in our lives.
There is another element of the northern autumn season that I notice but this year I see it in a new way. I am struck by the fiery blaze of color that washes the landscape. Here is an energy of vitality that does not just focus on the past but inspires a link to the future and turns me to meet what is yet-to-come with a sense of hope, fiery hope. I realize that giving thanks is also about welcoming the future.
Planning for our Thanksgiving meal, I am appreciative of the rich abundance of harvest my family will share together. Looking through recipes to prepare, I imagine the shapes and colors and smells that will fill my kitchen with the life of earth’s recent summer growth. I feel the rooted vitality of soil and water, sun and air and all that weaves together to create the richness of life that nature so freely shares. I am inspired by the qualities of generosity, diversity, abundance, joy, growth.
I am grateful for the earth and its bounty of resources and I give thanks for the nourishment that comes from its generous gifting.
Thanksgiving is also a time I am called to give thanks for my community. “Ding, dong,” the doorbell rings, and I answer with anticipation, “Come in, Welcome! So good to see you! My how your little ones have grown! How are you?” Coming together to touch in, share a meal, and hear stories of the last year from those who have been away, I feel the warmth and experiences of my life and the people and places of my history weave together in the fabric of this present moment. I am strengthened and upheld in the qualities of resilience, commitment, perseverance, faithfulness and hospitality.
As I reconnect and remember my roots with family, friends and community, I honor the many connections that strengthen the fabric of my life.
These two aspects of the Thanksgiving season help me to frame what is present and what has grown in my life. I am nurtured, strengthened and deepened in qualities such as gratitude, honor, thoughtfulness, generosity, love. This is the ground, the wellspring energy of harvest and Thanksgiving and it is characterized for me in the traditional symbol of the cornucopia, baskets overflowing with fruits and produce, the generous gifts of the earth and the wealth of human caring and creativity.
But the Fall is also a turning point in the year. We are carried into a shift of focus as nature draws its energy into root and seed, contracting from the expansive abundance of harvest into the hidden potency of winter’s possibility. Standing at this fulcrum of harvest time I realize there is another element to the fullness of this season. Giving thanks faces us toward the future as well as to the past.
In this moment of seasonal pause after the harvest, quiet descends, darkness lends mystery and there is time to rest from the busyness of doing. How does my thanks find its voice in this more contracted time?
Here I am called to a seed of light within myself, not out in the earth or my community. I am drawn to be one who will call out light and life within others and the world. I notice my sense of giving thanks takes the shape of hope and invitation. The fiery colors that are left in the leaves when the tree’s energy returns to its roots are a symbol for this essential source of hope in me. Present to myself, I find the humility and courage to stand in hope’s colors too.
In this standing, the backdrop of harvest bounty and welcoming community becomes a resource I can call upon. It offers a memory of connectedness with the earth and with others that is a source of balance and orientation in the midst of a time as yet unfixed and unknowing. The qualities of will, intention, courage, and service come into focus. I feel invited to be a source of hope for the future.
A third time, I stop and share in thanksgiving, this time for the unknown future that calls to bring new possibility to life, potentials inherent within the earth, within my community and within me.
In this season of giving thanks, I celebrate the earth, my community and the light of Self with gratitude. Recreating the fabric of this connection in celebration and thanksgiving, I seek to open the door to the past, present and future with grace, with creativity and with joy. What is known and honored brings me the strength and resilience to say “Yes” to what is unknown and so engage the emerging new with willingness and creativity.
With Blessings and Thanksgiving!