A day of national thanksgiving; a day of repentance?
If I had the talent of Sam Clemens, I'd write a scathing prayer to match the famous Mark Twain prayer for victory in war (http://classiclit.about.com/library/bl-etexts/mtwain/bl-mtwain-war.htm). Prompted by the jingoism of the Spanish-American War, it went unpublished until after his death.
I'll content myself with giving thanks for the bounty of this great land and for the opportunity our European founders were given to steal it from its original unworthy inhabitants who didn't know how to exploit its resources to the maximum; and for the means of accomplishing that great transfer -- the guns, steel, and germs that made genocide feasible and a continental empire possible. And the Bible that was used to bless it.
Lest in our tales of Pilgrims and Savages we forget the other great member of the trinity that provided the material foundations of our great nation, I also give thanks for the slavery that enriched both North and South -- the one through wise, enriching participation in the great trans-Atlantic Triangle Trade of slaves, molasses, and rum; the other through the clever use of unpaid labor to build the region's wealth.
Thanks are due, therefore, for theft, genocide, and slavery -- the means to opening up the vast resources that were previously unknown to Europeans, and the foundations for our later prosperity. And for war, to secure our blessings.
I give thanks that the past is past, allowing many to remain serenely indifferent to these things while watching parades and football games and eating overbred birds that are maladapted for living free -- a nation giving thanks and resting up for the ominously named "Black Friday" of extreme shopping.
And I give thanks for the possibility of repentance. Without inward examination, reflection, and repentance, untroubled minds never learn; they, we, keep repeating the old patterns in new ways. Confession is good for the soul: that holds true for the nation, too. A day of national repentance would offer up the possibility, for the clear of mind and contrite of heart, of following a new path. The unexamined life, as a continuous repetition until at last the point of terminal exhaustion is reached, is in the end not worth living.
Words to hear and inwardly digest:
Sherman Edwards, the composer and lyricist of "1776" put these words in the mouth of Edward Rutledge of South Carolina:
Molasses to rum to slaves, oh what a beautiful waltz
You dance with us, we dance with you
Molasses and rum and slaves
Who sails the ships out of Boston
Ladened with bibles and rum?
Who drinks a toast to the Ivory Coast?
Hail Africa, the slavers have come -
New England with bibles and rum
And its off with the rum and the bibles
Take on the slaves, clink, clink
Hail and farewell to the smell
Of the African coast
Molasses to rum to slaves
'Tisn't morals, 'tis money that saves
Shall we dance to the sound of the profitable pound
In molasses and rum and slaves
Who sails the ships out of Guinea
Ladened with bibles and slaves?
'Tis Boston can coast to the West Indies coast
Jamaica, we brung what ye craves
Antigua, Barbados, we brung bibles and slaves!
Molasses to rum to slaves
Who sail the ships back to Boston
Ladened with gold, see it gleam
Whose fortunes are made in the triangle trade
Hail slavery, the New England dream!
Mr. Adams, I give you a toast:
Hail Boston! Hail Charleston!
Who stinketh the most?
Sam Clemens wrote: "O Lord our Father, our young patriots, idols of our hearts, go forth to battle -- be Thou near them! With them, in spirit, we also go forth from the sweet peace of our beloved firesides to smite the foe. O Lord our God, help us to tear their soldiers to bloody shreds with our shells; help us to cover their smiling fields with the pale forms of their patriot dead; help us to drown the thunder of the guns with the shrieks of their wounded, writhing in pain; help us to lay waste their humble homes with a hurricane of fire; help us to wring the hearts of their unoffending widows with unavailing grief; help us to turn them out roofless with their little children to wander unfriended the wastes of their desolated land in rags and hunger and thirst, sports of the sun flames of summer and the icy winds of winter, broken in spirit, worn with travail, imploring Thee for the refuge of the grave and denied it -- for our sakes who adore Thee, Lord, blast their hopes, blight their lives, protract their bitter pilgrimage, make heavy their steps, water their way with their tears, stain the white snow with the blood of their wounded feet! We ask it, in the spirit of love, of Him Who is the Source of Love, and Who is ever-faithful refuge and friend of all that are sore beset and seek His aid with humble and contrite hearts. Amen.
(After a pause)
"Ye have prayed it; if ye still desire it, speak! The messenger of the Most High waits."
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Thankful for tradition of dissent
Wpeltz, this was a good reminder of the dark side of the American myth. Mark Twain's little prayer is especially appropos for the wars happening today.
American history is full of injustice. But it also has always had Americans who have tried to fight those injustices. Tonight, after our Thanksgiving dinner I talked to my mother-in-law, and she told me that her daughter has opportunities now that she never had as a young woman because of the battles fought by Gloria Steinem, Betty Friedan, Pat Schroeder and all those women from the feminist movement in the 1960s and 1970s. I thought of Frederick Douglass, William Lloyd Douglass, Sojourner Truth, and all the abolitionists in the 19th Century fighting slavery. America includes the women who met at Seneca Falls in 1848, like Lucretia Mott, Susan B. Anthony, and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, who fought for women to gain the right to vote and to reject the idea that they were inferior to men. The America I'm thankful for includes W.E.B. DuBois, William Jennings Bryan, Dorothy Day, Emma Goldman, Eleanor Roosevelt, and all those figures who fought the exploitation of African Americans and workers and farmers. As an Asian American, I'm thankful for Thurgood Marshall, Ralph Abernathy, Martin Luther King Jr., John Lewis, Malcolm X, Cesar Chavez, and all those who fought the Civil Rights battles of the 1950s and 1960s that gave all minorities greater opportunities today. And I'm thankful for Mark Twain, for being a writer with the courage to point out how America falls short of its highest ideals.
Our shared American heritage includes theft, genocide, and slavery, as Wpeltz reminds us. But our heritage also includes Americans who dissented from those injustices. That American tradition of dissent is something to be thankful for this Thanksgiving. Right now I'm reading Howard Zinn's book "You Can't Be Neutral On A Moving Train". He wrote:
"I said I could understand being depressed by the state of the world, but the questioner caught my mood accurately. To him and to others, mine seemed an absurdly cheerful approach to a violent and unjust world. But to me what is often disdained as romantic idealism, as wishful thinking, is justified if it prompts action to fulfill those wishes, to bring to life those ideals.
The willingness to undertake such action cannot be based on certainties, but on those possibilities glimpsed in a reading of history different from the customary painful recounting of human cruelties. In such a reading we can find not only war but resistance to war, not only injustice but rebellion against injustice, not only selfishness but self-sacrifice, not only silence in the face of tyranny but defiance, not only callousness but compassion.
Human beings show a broad spectrum of qualities, but it is the worst of these that are usually emphasized, and the result, too often, is to dishearten us, diminish our spirit. History is full of instances where people, against enormous odds, have come together to struggle for liberty and justice, and have won- not often enough, of course, but enough to suggest how much more is possible.
The essential ingredient of these struggles for justice are human beings who, if only for a moment, if only while beset with fears, step out of line and do something, however small. And even the smallest, most unheroic of acts adds to the store of kindling that may be ignited by some surprising circumstance into tumultous change."
A Deep Seated Doubt
As long as you and Mark Twain had the courage to be a bit sardonic I am going to reveal a deep seated doubt about Thanksgiving.
If God truly has anything to do with the food chain, evil types like Sadaam Hussein, George W. Bush, Hitler,etc. would starve.Conversely, poor, devout, God loving people would have plenty to eat. However just the opposite is true.
Could it be that God really doesn't take an interest in the distribution of the food chain? Or could it be that it is OUR job to take an interest in the distribution of the food chain? We are here on the Earth, technically and scientifically speaking, we should be able to raise enough food to feed everybody, but it isn't happening. Is God doing his job but we aren't doing ours?