Monday Morning Musing: You Are Not What Other People Say You Are & Other Important Holiday Sentiment

It's the week of Thanksgiving and for many of us, the holiday tables, either literal or metaphorical, will be difficult. Loved ones will be painfully absent. Difficult relationships will be served up piping hot like that second helping of mashed potatoes no one really needs.

In some of my fraught relationships, this is the season when the screws begin to turn again. Today, in the middle of a deeply meaningful Interfaith Celebration, held at the congregation I serve, as I listened to voices long oppressed speak and choirs from various faiths sing out their hopeful messages, my phone *pinged*. Flinging out from across the miles came accusations and harsh words, name calling and lots of phrases in quotation marks whose purpose I didn't understand. It was the annual holiday ritual of dysfunction. Lots of responses bubbled up from Lizzie, which is the name I give to my reptilian brain. Witty, stinging comebacks. Reasoned responses. Righteous indignation. Anger meeting anger. Lizzie still wants to send them, to be honest, but I've asked her take a seat at the back of my personal life bus while a more reasoned me tries not to drive us off a cliff.

This is to say, dear ones, that the holidays do not always bring out the best in us or in others. Please hold it all lightly. Please know that you can do/be whatever you need to do/be for your own well being as long as, please, you don't hurt someone else. If you need to gather with friends instead of blood relatives, do that. If you need to eat with just your beloved or just your cat, do that. If you need to go to the movies and pick up some fast food on the way home, do that. If you want to work at the local soup kitchen, do that, but consider also doing it in other months of the year.

You are not what other people say you are. You do not need to mold yourself to fit their needs. You do not need to ride every wave in their ocean. And neither do I. Take care of your beautiful soul. Take care of those you love and who are beloved to you. You, dear child of God, are perfectly made in God's image. And for that, I am thankful.

We will have a small, quiet Thanksgiving, joined by our oldest son, Greg. When he was just old enough to have learned to read, he read aloud a Thanksgiving prayer penned and offered by the original Abigail Van Buren, in her classic advice column, Dear Abby. May it bless your table:

Oh, Heavenly Father,

We thank Thee for food and remember the hungry.

We thank Thee for health and remember the sick.

We thank Thee for friends and remember the friendless.

We thank Thee for freedom and remember the enslaved.

May these remembrances stir us to service,

That Thy gifts to us may be used for others.

Amen.