Gratitude is not only the greatest of virtues, but the parent of all the others.
In a couple of days, we'll celebrate our best, most important holiday. While celebrations of the harvest have existed for as long as civilization (for indeed it was agriculture that necessitated both), this particular holiday is uniquely American. Or at least it was until other former British colonies started having a festival called Thanksgiving too.
There are those who enjoy pointing out the tragic irony of the American Thanksgiving: that it was originally a celebration of the bountiful harvest provided by the native inhabitants of this land, who were subsequently slaughtered by the beneficiaries of that kindness. But the tragedy of one action does not undo the beauty of another.
The beauty of that original day of Thanksgiving rests in their acknowledgment of the good fortune which they received: divine grace, spiritual enlightenment, or karma; call it what you will. Those pilgrims and those natives saw the bounty before them and had the dignity, respect, and intelligence to be grateful.
As is so often said, our holidays are debased by crass commercialism and lose their meaning in a flurry of planning, worry, and family frenzy. Christmas becomes a day about Santa Claus, Easter about a rabbit, Independence Day about fireworks, and Thanksgiving about football and a four-day weekend (oh, and shopping for Christmas). We forget that the original point is to wallow not in gluttony, but gratitude.
Thoreau said, "He who distinguishes the true savor of his food cannot be a glutton. He who does not, cannot be otherwise." That "true savor" must include respect and gratefulness for the source of the food, for the provider of the food, and for the food itself.
Lacking gratitude for the bounty we enjoy demonstrates not just a lack of respect for nature and God, but a lack of self-respect as well. Judeo-Christian (and other) prayers before a meal give thanks to God; Native American (and other) traditions thank the very animal on which they feast. Each represents a recognition of our own place in the world. To sit at a table with nourishing food in front of you and the people you love all around you yet not feel thankful reveals not only a lack of self-worth but a certain degree of foolishness as well.
And so, while gratitude should be acknowledged, felt, and practiced every day, we set aside one particular day each fall to celebrate the harvest and pay special attention to that which makes it possible for us to do everything else we do in this life. Food transforms us even as it is transformed into us. No truer cliché ever existed than "You are what you eat." But if it is so, then most Americans are fast, cheap, and easy. Thanksgiving is the one day of the year that most people actually practice the ideals of Slow Food.
Next time you eat, whether around a sumptuous table or behind the wheel at the drive-thru, stop for just a moment to consider what makes you truly thankful.
I am thankful for my family more than anything else, for they are my true sources of sustenance and joy. I am thankful for my awareness of the importance and impact of my food. I am thankful for crisp autumn mornings and rain and my dogs. I am thankful that I am still on the right side of the grass.
And bacon. I am very thankful for bacon.
Chef Kurt's Mom's Wild Rice Dressing
4 cups chicken broth
1 pound pork sausage (I use homemade, but any high-quality breakfast sausage will do)
1/4 lb. butter
2 portobello mushrooms, or about 10 crimini mushrooms, diced
1/2 each onion, minced
1 tablespoon parsley, chopped
1 stalk celery, diced
1 pinch fresh thyme
Boil rice in broth for 20 minutes.
Brown pork in butter until fully cooked. Add remaining ingredients. Simmer 10 minutes, then mix in rice and remaining broth. Bake covered at 350 degrees F for 20 minutes, then uncovered to desired consistency.
Serve immediately or store; freezes well.
A tasting of four meatless “turkeys” for the holiday table
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Comments
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redambrosia99 Posted 1:01 am
25 Nov 2008
I wonder, how many families do their "thankfuls"? In my family, we start with the youngest, and go around saying what we're thankful for that year.
Do other's practice this tradition as well?
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caniscandida Posted 5:00 am
25 Nov 2008
No, let us please leave Cicero out of our first rank of masters of morality.
"Gratitude," correctly understood, is the appreciative and friendly sentiment of one party in a real (and not metaphorical) relationship between two moral agents, in reaction to some kindness done by the other party. When he calls gratitude "the mother of all virtues," Cicero perhaps refers to the philosophical commonplace, that all virtue begins in a basic humble, respectful and hopeful recognition of an essential goodness in others, which recognition might be gratitude at its most simple.
Cicero died (was assassinated, on the orders of Mark Antony) a number of years before Virgil wrote his epic, the Aeneid. He probably would have hated that poem's pro-Augustan tendency, but nevertheless would have appreciated the characteristic virtue of Aeneas, pietas: not "piety" as we mean it, but rather a goodness which consists in a commitment to fulfil the claims of gods, family, friends, neighbors, and fellow citizens. And so perhaps we can say that Aeneas's recognition of those claims requires a sense of gratitude (though that is not quite how I would put it).
ANYWAY, the metaphorical use of "gratitude," if that is what it is, is pretty problematic. Maybe "intransitive use" would be better than "metaphorical," but the meaning is no improvement. It is simply nonsense to say that one is "thankful" for such superhuman phenomena as crisp Autumn mornings, rain and dogs, unless one is thinking specifically of some superhuman intelligent moral agent who has provided those things, e.g. Aurora the goddess of mornings, Autumnus the personified season of Autumn, Jove the weather-god, and Diana the mistress of animals.
Kurt Michael Friese seems to prefer Yahweh, and/or Jesus Christ, which is fine. Those are names who are likely to be more acceptable to modern Americans. Or maybe not.
As for the Pilgrims, whose Thanksgiving prayer might very well have been, "We thank thee, O Lord On High, for establishing us as thine agents of authoritarianism, exploitation and intolerance in this brave new world, and for sending us forth to make life unlivable for many of thy good creatures in this land, yay even for these Native Americans with whom we share this meal," we should remember what fierce iconoclasts they were, with regard to tradition. Since there is nothing in the Bible about Jesus' being born on December 25, it became positively anti-Christian and impious for members of that weird Christian sect to celebrate Christmas. But then, missing a big cheery feast to brighten the season of darkness and cold, they invented this other occasion in November, and gave it its cultic significance (with an unconscious translation of the name of the principal liturgy of mainstream Christians, eucharistia being Greek for "thanksgiving").
Therefore, following their own iconoclastic example, we may be inspired to reject their Puritan agenda, and more happily recall more noble cultural leaders in American history, such as the peace-loving Quakers, who had a far more enlightened relationship with Native Americans, and of whom a few lost their lives to Puritan executioners when they spoke openly about their beliefs in Boston; or Emerson and Thoreau, sons of Massachusetts, who perceived the futility and destructiveness of the piety of their Christian neighbors, and discovered a more truly admirable, universal kind of spirituality.
As for the turkeys, pigs and any other animals who will have been slaughtered, and will be eaten this Thursday, let us not go so far as to thank them for their part in the dinner -- unless we are prepared to subscribe to the tendentious fiction of Native Americans, that the animals whose flesh we eat have willingly laid down their lives out of kindness for us. And if we thank some divinity for the gift of those slaughtered animals, let us be aware that that theological notion simply entangles Him/Her in the radically disappointing cosmic injustice, from which in our more profound moments we pray to be delivered.
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