November 2007 - A Beatitudes Thanks-Giving

Thanks-Giving

From the Executive Director, The Rev. Anne S. Howard

I am not a Calvinist, but at Thanksgiving when we remember those early puritans and pilgrims, I recall the wisdom of ol' John Calvin in his proposition that we rest upon the initiative of the Creator. In Calvin's words "we are not our own." In short, Calvin would say, life is a gift.

This notion of life as gift—whether life serves up desserts or disasters—matters. So says one of my favorite authors and thinkers, ethicist Timothy Sedgewick, who wrote*, "We can either accept or reject this gift. We thereby either withdraw from the world...or else we engage the world...we either atrophy or grow, contract or enlarge as we either accept or reject the gift of life. To accept is to give thanks and to care for our world."

You, the Friends of The Beatitudes Society, are people who accept, people who give thanks, people who care for our world.

And so I offer you a line of thanksgiving, a well-known quote from another of my favorite authors. In her irreverent and holy and funny book Traveling Mercies, Anne Lamott says that there are really only two prayers: "Help me, help me, help me" and "Thank you, thank you, thank you."

I figure she's just about right. So to you who answer my prayers with your generous support of our effort to build a national network of progressive Christian leaders for social change: "Thank you, Thank you, Thank you."

Blessed are you for joining with the emerging leaders of The Beatitudes Society who dare to care for our fragile planet and our most vulnerable neighbors.

Happy Thanksgiving,

Anne

*in Sacramental Ethics

 

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