For each new morning with its light, For rest and shelter of the night, For health and food, for love and friends, For everything Thy goodness sends. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
I have so much to be thankful for it’s hard to know where to start. So I will start with you - the MOTI who gather here. We are like family whose members don’t always agree and some might even squabble but are nevertheless connected by a deep common bond. Unlike real families our bond isn’t blood but rather the shared values and principles that our country was founded on and we learned to cherish. We are bound together by our Constitution, the guide to building an America where freedom, opportunity, prosperity, and civil society flourish.
I am thankful for the many other things I have to be grateful for:
I’m grateful I was born on the cusp of the 50s, when America was great and nobody was ashamed of that.
A Sears-Roebuck Dutch colonial; ‘colonial’ - you could never list it that way today.
For having been born to a world where individual freedom, self-reliance and personal responsibility were core values of everyone who aspired to be a good citizen, and that was nearly everyone.
Where the freedom call of the open road was a siren’s song
beckoning us to explore the land and our place in it.
I’m grateful that I was born when America was seen as a melting pot - and that was a good thing, not bad. A time before ‘cultural appropriation’ was a thing and, if used at all, applied only to the Brits raiding Egyptian tombs.
Taco Tuesday wasn’t a thing and tacos weren’t racist
I’m grateful for having received an actual education focused on knowledge and critical thinking rather than indoctrination consisting of what to think about such things as ‘critical race theory’ and other ‘social justice’ issues.
I’m grateful that I was raised in a time when many people, black and white, worked to correct true civil rights injustices. And when “peaceful protests”
meant marches and sit-ins rather than riots and and the creation of fake victims to be exploited for political gain.
I’m grateful for having been young at a time when it wasn’t necessary to feel guilty about everything - what I ate, drank, drove, bought or dreamed about - for fear of being selfish and killing the planet.
Just because it was cool
For these, and much, much more, I’m truly grateful. I will wrap up this Thanksgiving post with my annual MOTI Thanksgiving prayer:
In addition to all the other blessings
you have conferred on my reflective frame
I wish to thank you, Lord,
for the companionship of steadfast comrades
whose wit and wisdom and strength
help steer me through these tempestuous seas
of flattery and lies churned to fury by the ill will of demagogues.
Amen.
A special thanks to all who visit here. I wish you a peaceful, happy Thanksgiving unmarred by strife. Because there is always something to be thankful for.
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