{"id":3420,"date":"2006-11-23T12:14:00","date_gmt":"2006-11-23T12:14:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/standingonmyhead\/2006\/11\/thanks-living\/"},"modified":"2014-12-23T18:05:54","modified_gmt":"2014-12-23T23:05:54","slug":"thanks-living","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/standingonmyhead\/2006\/11\/thanks-living.html","title":{"rendered":"Thanks-Living"},"content":{"rendered":"<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC \"-\/\/W3C\/\/DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional\/\/EN\" \"http:\/\/www.w3.org\/TR\/REC-html40\/loose.dtd\">\n<html><head><meta http-equiv=\"content-type\" content=\"text\/html; charset=utf-8\"><meta http-equiv=\"content-type\" content=\"text\/html; charset=utf-8\"><\/head><body><p>In 1979 I went to study in England, and apart from vacations in the USA, have lived there until June of this year. During that time I celebrated Thanksgiving just once\u2013during a family reunion year.<\/p>\n<p>After living abroad, and having returned home after twenty five years what am I thankful for about the United States of America?<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Optimism<\/strong> \u2013 Americans are still optimistic about the world, about their country and about themselves. They believe that if there is a problem they can fix it, if they are down and out it is possible to be up and in. America is still the land of opportunity and ordinary people seem to know that, and are willing to step out and do something daring.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Faith \u2013<\/strong>Americans are believers. They might be mixed up and confused in their religion, but they hold to their beliefs with passion and sincerity. The good side of the huge religious cafeteria out there is that people are genuinely tolerant, curious and willing to discuss and defend their beliefs.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Courage \u2013 <\/strong>Because they are believers, Americans are willing to fight for their beliefs. They believe in right and wrong, and they believe that real choice matters. While this courage may be misplaced and mis-used, it means that good folks are willing to get involved and fight for what they think is right. It may be left wing lesbians or right wing pro lifers, but both sides are willing to get involved and \u2018fight the good fight.\u2019<\/li>\n<li><strong>Cheerfulness <\/strong>\u2013 There is a lack of cynicism in America. Sometimes it is combined with ignorance, \u201cDo y\u2019all drive over here from England??\u201d and naivete: \u201cDo you know Princess Diana?\u201d but beneath it all there is a common strand of cheerful good humor, open-ness and cheerful acceptance of others.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Generosity \u2013 <\/strong>Its true that Americans are consumers. We use up a huge amount of the world\u2019s resources. We\u2019re rich. We\u2019re prosperous, but we\u2019re also generous. Every day I see people making small sacrifices to help the poor in their community. There are loads of grass roots volunteer organizations as well as high end benefactors. Rich Americans bequeath millions to charity and do so cheerfully.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Modesty <\/strong>\u2013 There are lots of Americans with a chip on their shoulder who strut arrogantly across the stage, but there are more Americans who are genuinely happy to be ordinary. Americans don\u2019t have an aristocracy. They still admire the immigrant who is working hard, the small business man, the stay at home Mom and the student struggling to work his way through college. Americans praise the little guy and trust the little guy. They still distrust the big guys, and that has to be healthy.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Straight Talking \u2013 <\/strong>Because they don\u2019t have as much of a class system, most Americans are able to be themselves, talk straight, say what they mean and mean what they say. They may not be subtle. They may not have a wry, sarcastic sense of humor, but the average American has learned to work hard and play hard. He cracks a joke, strikes a deal, shakes a hand and what you see is what you get. Coming from a society where everyone is adept at saying one thing and meaning exactly the opposite, its a breath of fresh air.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>It\u2019s Thanksgiving, so I\u2019ll leave the criticisms for later\u2026<\/p>\n<p>I\u2019m glad to be home. Pass the turkey.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In 1979 I went to study in England, and apart from vacations in the USA, have lived there until June of this year. During that time I celebrated Thanksgiving just once\u2013during a family reunion year. After living abroad, and having returned home after twenty five years what am I thankful for about the United States [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":557,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3420","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v21.1 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Thanks-Living<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"In 1979 I went to study in England, and apart from vacations in the USA, have lived there until June of this year. During that time I celebrated\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/standingonmyhead\/2006\/11\/thanks-living.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Thanks-Living\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"In 1979 I went to study in England, and apart from vacations in the USA, have lived there until June of this year. During that time I celebrated\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/standingonmyhead\/2006\/11\/thanks-living.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Fr. 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