A Sustainist Thanksgiving

My Hebrew Scripture Professor, Harvey Guthrie, once said in his class on the Psalms, “Thanksgiving is about remembering.”   To give thanks is to remember.  In the Biblical tradition, to give thanks to God is to remember what God has done for us.  The people of Israel gave thanks by remembering how God had delivered them from the oppression of the Egyptians, from slavery to freedom, in the Exodus experience.  In remembering this event, they gave thanks to God by offering a sacrifice.  The sacrifice of an animal was a sign, an action that symbolized this remembrance.  And then by remembering and taking a symbolic action, we renew our vows to be faithful to God.  

Offer to God a sacrifice of thanksgiving and make good your vows to the most high.  (Psalm 50:14)

In Psalm 50, the psalmist sang about how God did not want our sacrifice as a hollow gesture with no meaning and lead to little actions.  To the Psalmist, the best sacrifice we can offer is to give thanks and this thanksgiving should move us to renewing and keeping our vows—our promises—to God.

As we remember the blessings we received and give thanks, we must renew our promise to sustain each other and the earth so that the blessings will continue to flow.  Here is a sustainist approach to celebrating Thanksgiving that you can do on your own or with a group.

1. Recall an event:
   1. Review this past year and recall an event of blessing or transformation for you. 
   2. Write down the sequence of events leading to this blessing or transformation. 
   3. Name the persons or groups that had facilitated this transformation.  Describe their actions.
2. Symbolic Action:  
   1. Create a symbolic action that can help you remember this event.  This symbolic action may or may not involve the people who had facilitated your transformation.  For example, the symbolic action can be writing a thank-you card to a person recalling the blessings that this person has been for you.   Other symbolic actions may include inviting another to a meal, offering of a gift, creating a photo album, creating a video, making a public announcement, . . . etc.
3. Renew a Promise: 
   1. As part of your symbolic action, offer or renew a promise that you would carry out for the persons or community involved.  For example, a promise can be:  I will volunteer at the homeless shelter for this coming year or I will spend 15 minutes a day to pray or I will visit with a person at least once a month, etc.

Here is dialogue process that you can use during Thanksgiving with your family and friends.

1. Invite your family and friends to complete the sentences:
   • A blessing I received  this past year was . . .
   • In remembering these blessings, I give thanks to  . . .
2. Give them time to write down the sentences.
3. Using Mutual Invitation, invite each person to share his/her sentences
4. Invite them to complete the sentence:
   • As a symbol of my thanksgiving, I promise to  . . .
5. Using Mutual Invitation, invite each person to share his/her sentence.
6. End the sharing by a prayer or a song that everyone knows.

You may incorporate a symbolic action for participants to do while they share.  For example, put pebbles in a bowl making sure that there are at least one or two pebbles per person.  In step 2, each participant takes a pebble before she shares her two sentences.  For step 5, participants put the pebbles back in the bowl as they share their promises.  The bowl of pebbles is placed somewhere visible through out the year.  The same bowl of pebbles can then be used again next Thanksgiving.