In fact<\/a>, the very term \u201cMiddle Ages\u201d was one the people of this time invented as a way of dismissing the thought, traditions, and culture of the previous 1000 years. They spoke of a return to primitive Christianity, celebrated a literary humanism that turned to the ancient Greeks, and eventually built a neo-classical revival in architecture. It was an era of renaissance: rebirth. And those Pilgrims were aiming to be reborn as far away from their old lives and customs as possible.<\/p>\nIt\u2019s one thing to negotiate one\u2019s way into problematic traditions. All traditions, all cultures, are problematic. Few of us do things exactly like our grandparents did. Rather, at best, we allow those traditions to form us while we\u2019re young, and then gradually we learn to engage with them critically. We revise, accept, and discard various aspects of the worlds that formed us. It\u2019s a bit like a work of improvisational theater: we find our way into being ourselves through the language and structures others have offered us.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s another thing entirely, though, to reject a tradition from soup to nuts. This is often, as I think was the case with our Pilgrims, a recipe for hubris. It\u2019s a people saying \u201cWe have moved so far beyond our ancestors and fellow humans that we need a big blank space, free of them, in order to start over.\u201d There are, to be sure, moments of real beauty and insight to the undecorated language and worship spaces of these Christians. But the total effect is problematic: they sought to isolate themselves from all others on both sides of the Atlantic in order to hear directly from God.<\/p>\n
Another Theological Origin Story<\/h2>\n
And yet there was a moment, there at Plymouth in 1621. After surviving their first winter and learning, from an English-speaking Pawtuxet man, how to grow corn, the colonists held a feast. They invited the Wampanoag people, who came and brought dishes to share. They celebrated soil and harvest, the changing of seasons, and the gift of cohabiting a piece of earth.\u00a0It\u2019s likely that they offered prayers of gratitude in multiple language.<\/p>\n
It was not quite as idyllic as all that, of course. Squanto, the Pawtuxet farmer, seems to have been a survivor, not above triangulation and double talk. His own tribe, as well as the Wampanoag, had already been decimated by disease introduced by English trade ships. The alliance they formed with the Pilgrims would last half a century\u2014an eternity in comparison with nearly every other treaty between Anglo-Americans and Native Peoples. But it would end with the bloodiest per capita war in the recorded history\u2014still\u2014 of the continent.<\/p>\n
Far from perfect, then. But still filled with hope and promise and joy. \u201cWe made it through the winter! The ground and forest has given us food! There are neighbors coming to share our feast! The God we trust has not forgotten us!\u201d<\/p>\n
I think it\u2019s time to recover that theological origin story. Not the theology that sent the Pilgrims over here to draw their own articles. But the theology of hope and joy that the feast that day gave a small, imperfect glimpse of. A true harvest festival, where we celebrate God\u2019s earth, its gifts, and the neighbors and family and friends with whom we share these spaces.<\/p>\n
The Eschatological Thanksgiving<\/h2>\n
A new harvest festival would need to be an eschatologically oriented affair, as the feast of 1621 was. Not perfect, that is, but anticipating a full, divine perfection. Most often these days our connection to the earth is mediated by ecologically damaging technologies. The cranberries may come in a can from a factory, the turkey may be shipped on a truck from a giant factory farm several states away. Sometimes the neighbors and family can\u2019t make the feast and we wind up alone.<\/p>\n
But there\u2019s always next year, as the Jewish diaspora reminds themselves each year at their imperfect Passover. And beyond that, there\u2019s always the feast of the Kingdom of Heaven, which all earthly harvest festivals anticipate: the \u201conce and future\u201d feast that we are already rehearsing for.<\/p>\n
I hope my family Thanksgiving this year can look a little like that.\u00a0A harvest festival that celebrates abundance, the changing of seasons, the gifts of soil and field, and the companionship of friends and family and strangers who navigate together our days and years on God\u2019s good Earth.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
As I load the car, like millions of other Americans, for a long road trip to see family this week, I find myself contemplating a theological reclaiming of Thanksgiving. Holy Days All holidays were once, as is more or less obvious, \u201choly days.\u201d Even as those days enter into secular civic space, the \u201choly\u201d backgrounds […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4601,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[212,200],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2100","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ecotheology","category-liturgical-seasons"],"yoast_head":"\n
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