While I was growing up, my family would ask me, each Thanksgiving, to begin our feast with a prayer. Dwarfed by a long, polished cherry table and the Dickensian turkey plopped obscenely before me, I dutifully delivered a solemn blessing: eyes closed, rep tie half-Windsored, hair brushed sensibly across my twelve year old head like an age-appropriate Blagojevich.
I suppose I had a way with words. I took, for example, a perverse pride in the fact that a poem I wrote in the seventh grade, told from the perspective of a colonial soldier injured in the Revolutionary War, made my teacher cry. In hindsight, good old Mrs. Butler may have had some deeper issues. But still.
My annual Thanksgiving prayers generally had a similar, if not quite as Kleenex-requiring, effect on my family, as I waxed reverent on God, Jesus, and pilgrims. That changed abruptly for a couple years in college and shortly thereafter, when I entered my "There-is-no-God-and-therefore-no-point-in-praying-so-I-think-I'll-spend-my-time-puking-my-guts-out-and/or-having-as-much-meaningless-sex-as-possible-instead" phase.
Since then, for reasons way too boring to get into here, I've been lucky enough to find a little more balance... a little more meaning in my life. Though labels do more harm than good, I'd say an okay way to describe myself today is Deistic in theory, Episcopal in practice--so, for fellow history dorks, basically a modern day George Washington (minus the whole American hero thing).
More and more, I'm beginning to believe that our and future generations can restore religion, no matter the specific belief, as an institution for positive social change, and take it back from the bunch of assholes who've co-opted it for their own hate profiteering. Think back to how the church spearheaded the African-American Civil Rights Movement, then update it to the injustices we face today: the annihilation of the environment and unequal marriage rights, just to name a couple examples.
To get to the point, with Thanksgiving's impending arrival and with so much to be truly thankful for, I decided to prepare a prayer this year for my family. Only I wanted to make it one that I was comfortable with--a prayer that eschewed dogmatic, patriarchal language. And, in the spirit of giving, I thought I'd share it with you. Rhythmically, it's modeled off the Christian "Lord's Prayer," primarily out of laziness, but please modify it to fit your own religious, spiritual, skeptical, or atheistic beliefs.
Our Universe, which is everywhere:
Man, we are really, really small compared to you.
I hope we learn to stop killing each other
and live in peace,
because that would be awesome.
We're so lucky to have this food, and each other,
even though we've all acted like real jerks before--to strangers
and, even more inexplicably, to each other.
But I hope we learn to act less crappy
and instead learn to appreciate the gifts and the love that surround us,
each and every day.
Dig in.
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