Thanksgiving Meditation

We all know the Thanksgiving jokes about the Norman Rockwell dinners that deteriorate into Wars of the Roses. We are joined together for that day with various and sundry parts of families, however the cards may fall. It's common practice to complain around the virtual water cooler about the obligations and precarious allegiances we must maintain. I like to imagine a different world.

When I think about past civilizations and their accomplishments- building temples to the sun in accordance with the movements of the heavens, for instance - it seems people used to have much different brains than we do. Who among us could simply gather a computerless team, meditate and calculate, conceive and execute such wonders as the pyramids, Stonehenge, or a Mayan temple, structures dependent on enormously complex mathematical and astronomical understanding? Maybe past peoples were better equipped to do these things because of a different brain structure. But we surely have the vestiges of that structure and the potential to activate it, at least on a small scale at the Thanksgiving table!

I imagine the Pilgrims and the Indians sharing a kind of group meditative state of wonder and thankfulness, moving thoughtfully and kindly and with spirits of profound gratitude for the life situation they were sharing. Children played and cried, plates were dropped,the dog grabbed a turkey leg, but the group meditation carried the day.

I remember a particular Thanksgiving in Santa Fe in the sixties, when, in the blush of new adulthood, and perhaps augmented by spiritual enhancements, that same feeling of wonder and gratitude for life pervaded our group, our minds joined in spiritual communion and gladness for our lives. A more-or-less Zen method prevailed as yams were mashed, onions and apples were chopped, imaginative stuffings were concocted. There was a transcendent feeling, activity in the spheres above and beyond our selves, angels among us. That experience taught me well, and has continued to inspire my perception of every Thanksgiving. And, really, isn't that what's always happened, in all our Thanksgivings, whether we were attuned to it or not?

I see glimmers of the peaceful joining of minds still, abiding above the complaints and chaos of Thanksgiving travels and preparations and feasting, immanent in the sometimes awkward prayers and efforts to remember what we're thankful for. It's there. I imagine that we all can grab hold of that ancient mindset that joined our ancestors together in productive communal endeavors , and feast with joy.