“Receive is a freedom word. Take is not. To receive is to accept what the divine largess provides for us. To take is to plunder whatever is not nailed down. To receive is to do what children do in the family. To take is to do what pirates do on the high seas.”
(Eugene Peterson, Traveling Light)
I have always liked Thanksgiving. I remember in grammar school all the activities and plays focusing on that national holiday. I remember tracing my hand on a piece of paper and from that tracing creating a turkey with the outline of my thumb serving as the head and the outline of my four fingers creating plumage as colorful as a rainbow. I remember singing, “Come, Ye Thankful People, Come” and thinking about the harvest brought home on my relatives’ farms. I remember the delicious and bountiful Thanksgiving feasts my mother and grandmother prepared as our extended family gathered around that dining table with all leaves inserted to accommodate our loved ones. And I remember the skits we practiced and performed commemorating that first Thanksgiving with Pilgrims and “Indians.” I was too young to realize that the “history” we were being served had been falsified for our tender hearts. The real story is a heartbreaking tale of greed, plunder, and genocide. The United States, like so many empires before it, has justified its existence and reputation on myths of deceit and hypocrisy.
We are enslaved when we take, with no thought of the Source of the blessings and the community for which they are intended; the future being nurtured in the womb of divine providence; and the web of creation in which we are all but strands bound inextricably to one another.
I still like Thanksgiving, though I now understand its aim more as creating an attitude and a harmonious community we are called to embrace than a falsehood from the past we are to celebrate in our own time. I would suggest that if we are truly to observe the spirit of thanksgiving, we must understand the difference between receiving and taking. We are truly free when we are able to receive from God, others, and our earth the gifts of life and love. We are enslaved when we take, with no thought of the Source of the blessings and the community for which they are intended; the future being nurtured in the womb of divine providence; and the web of creation in which we are all but strands bound inextricably to one another.
Receiving involves a trusting relationship. Like children blessed with trustworthy and loving parents, we trust the one who gives and so we are able to receive with thankful hearts. Because we can receive, we are open every day to the gifts and fruits of the Spirit. Everyday becomes an adventure within the family of God as we receive from our Parent and from one another the good things of life. We greet each morning wondering what type of manna will come our way as we open our hearts to the movement of the Spirit in the time we have to live and to love. Those whose basic attitude is taking will never know this freedom. Those who define their existence by taking must spend time and energy hoarding and protecting what they have and scheming to get more. Such a person will never know the grace of receiving, the joy of communion, and the love of belonging. But most of all, such a person will never experience the joy of being a child of God. Freedom comes not from how much we can take from others and the earth. Freedom comes from the ability to receive that which is truly given for our common welfare and individual good.
The quote with which I began this article goes on to say, “All studies of the loss of freedom are stories of taking: Adam and Eve taking the fruit from the tree, Prometheus taking fire from the gods, Siegfried taking gold from the Nibelung. All the stories of access to freedom are stories of receiving. The most powerful of all these stories is that of the Christian Eucharist in which Christ’s disciples receive the sacramental bread and wine. This story continues to be told, re-enacted, and believed by persons who, set free, live freely.”
Every Thanksgiving in our home we begin our meal with a reading from the Psalms, some thoughts on the meaning of thanksgiving, and a prayer. This year we shall include bread and wine with the words of communion to remind us of the relationship between our thanksgiving and our freedom. It will not be the relationship I learned at Eustis Park Elementary School with its false narrative of the first Thanksgiving. It will be more like the relationship between freedom and thanksgiving our Pilgrim ancestors could have learned (but tragically did not learn) from those First Nations people whose generosity allowed them to survive those first menacing winters.
[If you want to hear the sad historical truth about the “First Thanksgiving,” I suggest you read the following two articles: The True Story of Thanksgiving by Richard Greener and The Horrible History of Thanksgiving by Charles M. Blow. I dare you to find the courage to read them.
Here is an excerpt from Greener’s article.
The first Thanksgiving Day did occur in the year 1637, but it was nothing like our Thanksgiving today. On that day the Massachusetts Colony Governor, John Winthrop, proclaimed such a “Thanksgiving” to celebrate the safe return of a band of heavily armed hunters, all colonial volunteers. They had just returned from their journey to what is now Mystic, Connecticut where they massacred 700 Pequot Indians. Seven hundred Indians – men, women and children – all murdered.
This day is still remembered today, 373 years later. No, it’s been long forgotten by white people, by European Christians. But it is still fresh in the mind of many Indians. A group calling themselves the United American Indians of New England meet each year at Plymouth Rock on Cole’s Hill for what they say is a Day of Mourning. They gather at the feet of a stature of Chief Massasoit of the Wampanoag to remember the long gone Pequot. They do not call it Thanksgiving. There is no football game afterward.
Needless to say, this is not the story I heard as a child, and it is not the story white citizens of the United States continue to tell today. But it is the story kept sacred by First Nations people for whom truth matters. In some ways, truth is all they have to hold on to—the truth about themselves and their history. Part of their struggle to survive and defy US greed and exploitation is their resistance to white revisionist history. Our ultimate survival as a decent and free people may depend on embracing their resistance to all of the self-serving lies which propel our cruel and exploitative economy and ideology. Native prophets may have been correct when they said that their people, possessing profound truths gained at a horrific price, would be the future saviors of America. If such prophecy proves to be correct, it would not be the first time in history the Great Spirit has used dispossessed minorities to save and heal the world.]
