Look Out, G*D–We’re About to Give Thanks

G*D, I just want to apologize in advance for the annual torrent of “thanks” you’re about to hear from some of us, Your most privileged. Just between You and me, some of these “prayers of thanksgiving” just rub me the wrong way. I don’t know how You stand it.

There are so many ways that “giving thanks” becomes something else entirely. Plus, we’re always putting things on You that are really not Your fault at all. If I were You, I would find that pretty irritating after a while.

I wonder if people even know what they’re doing. I wish people would stop and think what they are saying.

You know what I’m talking about. (Of course, You do; my bad. Gosh, I’m always doing that.)

But I just have to get this off my chest.

A five-year old was asked to give the blessing at Thanksgiving, but she didn’t know what to say. Her dad prompted her, “Just say what you hear mommy say.” So the little girl bowed her head and said, “Oh, Lord, why did I invite all these people here?”

“Thank You for family and friends…”

We say this even though we were just trash-mouthing that same family and those same friends five minutes ago out behind the garage, because of their politics or their spouses or the side dish they brought, which, let’s face it, always sucks. Why can’t we be honest and say, “Thank You that we didn’t kill each other before the pie was served”?

“Thank You for this day of rest and togetherness…”

Who are we kidding? Half of us will be in a football coma, the other half will be cooking and cleaning and griping, somebody will get drunk, teenagers don’t want to be there at all, conversations will be episodic at best, and we’d better hope there isn’t a college student at the table to remind us that we are really celebrating a massacre. But thanks, G*D!

“We are so blessed!”

What does that even mean? I’m sorry, it just sounds smug to me. Most of what we think of as blessings are really just our dumb luck. But lots of people really want to believe You showered them with individual gold stars or something. I dunno. Maybe You did.

If You did, it seems to me You’d want us to be a little more modest about it. I could be wrong about that.

“Let’s go around the table and say what we’re thankful for!”

We start this spiritual arm-twisting on our kids early, in a noble effort to teach those ingrates not to take life and its wonders for granted.

I think I tried something like that on my family in recent years, out of some pious idea that we were becoming too blase or something. It killed that conversation in a hurry. They just looked at me like I was maybe having a stroke. I think they were about to ask me to raise my arm and do that F.A.S.T. test.

Plus, if you ask your grown kids to say what they are thankful for, it’s a blatant bid for a “Thanks for giving me life, mom!” They know it and you know it.

“Thank You for our new home/car/job/trip to Turks and Caicos…!”

That’s nothing but bragging. We do it all the time. Any time we want to brag about some new acquisition or accomplishment, why, we just give thanks to You! I don’t know if You’re sick of it, but I’ve got to hold back an eyeroll once in a while.

“Thank you for the pain and the challenges you have put in our path so that we can overcome them and become better persons…”

To be sure, this prayer often reflects an authentic moment of grace, when someone has in fact lived through sorrow or loss only to find You on the other side of their grief.

But sometimes I think we abuse it. Like when someone says, “Thank you, G*D, for helping me through my recent battle with the management of the yacht club, because everybody knows…etc.” Well, everyone believes their troubles are the worst.

“Thank You for giving us all the things that You have denied to all those other losers in the world…”

I mean, we don’t say it in so many words, but that’s what we mean, isn’t it? We thank You, and then we eat these huge feasts, and then we complain because we “feel fat,” and then we go spend a ton of money to celebrate Your Son’s being born into a poor family with no health insurance. On the other hand, they reportedly had transportation that ran on sustainable fuel.

G*D, let me just ask you, straight up: Is my gratitude to You really all I owe You for my privilege? By giving You thanks, am I really totally, completely off the hook for helping those 3 billion other people who live on less than $1.25 per day?

See, I ask You that, and I don’t get a straight answer. So all I can do is deal with my seesaw of emotions — now deep joy at the truly marvelous life I get to live, now deep anguish at how unfair it seems.

My family says I can Scrooge up any holiday.

Our family is celebrating Thanksgiving on Friday, not Thursday, for logistical reasons. I’m happy with that — we don’t do shopping crowds anyway, and it gives me today to share my snarly, snarky, judgy reflection that if we maintained an attitude of gratitude year-round, we wouldn’t have to vomit up so much gratitude at You today.

And it gives me time to fire off this post, to remind all of us to get up off of our entitled backsides and do something for the folks who have less. We will all start small, sure, because it makes us feel good.

But G*D, I hope we all remember to also keep doing the real work of changing the systems that are doing the injuries in the first place.

Meanwhile, I hope You know I’m thankful for having been born in this wealthy time and place, with this body and brain and privilege. Though I could have done without the neuro-diversity and the acne. Just saying.

And I thank You for the Word we hear from You, however imperfectly

Somehow, even across infinity, we have received Your Word, and when it rings true it brings us sharply to faith and laughter and love and tears. Today I thank You for one of the great stories we tell in Your name here in this space/time continuum. You know the one I mean — it’s the parable Jesus tells about the rich man, in our Bible in Luke 12:16–21.

I love this story, because I am not a nice person. I’ll paraphrase.

Rich guy has so much food he doesn’t know what to do with it. It’s right before Thanksgiving, and his refrigerator is so full, he can’t even put it all away. So he goes to the pre-Black Friday sales, and he buys extra refrigerators for his main house, and his lake house, and the condo in Tahoe, with free delivery and installation, because he’s a pretty savvy consumer.

And he sits back and says to his soul, ‘Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years; relax, eat, drink, be merry.’

But then tornadoes rip through, and take out all three of his houses, and he’s left with nothing. And You say something like he’s a fool, because You can demand his life at any time, and then who is gonna eat that pie?

And Jesus ends the lesson by saying something like, “See? That’s how it goes for people who are rich on earth but not rich toward You.”

And I think, “Right on, Jesus! Tell that rich guy what’s what!”

And then I remember — uh-oh. I was thinking about getting a second refrigerator just last month. I’m the rich guy.

So here are my real prayers.

I’ll bet other people have real prayers like mine; they’re just embarrassed to say them out loud. So I’ll start, in the interest of trying to help us all be a little more authentic.

• Thank You for all the times I didn’t get caught speeding. There were a lot of those times.
• Thank You for my kids not blaming me to my face for what I did wrong with them.
• Thank You that my kids can afford therapy so they can work stuff out without blaming me to my face.
• Thank You that the people who make DiamonDeb Nail Files still make them to last forever at a reasonable price and have not succumbed to the sin of planned obsolescence. I do not get any money for saying that.
• Thank You for one day sober, added to nearly 20 years of sober days.
• Thank You for a spouse who likes to read and cook and is a person of kindness and integrity who, like me, also does not like football.
• Thank You for all the do-overs, because I’d really like to get right with You, because pleasant as it is, I’m aware this gig here is only a contract.
• Oh, all right. Thank you for my dear family and friends, because they seem to love me anyway.
• Thank You for the very slight chance that the human race will get its act together and survive and even flourish.

And thank You for making pie so easy.