This Thanksgiving I find myself reflecting on the absence of perfection. You have heard me preach about the problems of perfection as a standard, the way it encourages all of us to embrace definitions of the good that are culturally determined…and leaves us all perpetually unsatisfied with our performance and, sadly, with ourselves.

Preaching against perfection does not diminish, however, the truth that we are so divided, nor that so much in our body politic is in disarray.

I think of our deeply flawed political process and lament the fact that it seems more and more imperfect. Perfection would mean agreement with me, I suppose. I acknowledge that in moments when my anger and irritation give way to honesty.

I think of our deeply flawed civil religion, our celebration of American exceptionalism, which has justified such violence to native peoples and enslaved peoples and poor people for so long. The holiday we celebrate today is no exception.

And I remember that the Pilgrim fathers are our direct religious ancestors. Our liberal religious tradition rebelled against the orthodoxy they created, but their DNA still runs in our religious veins.

We, most of us, have been schooled to cynicism. In this era when even the notion of honesty, let alone its value, is under such attack, cynicism is an understandable response.

And yet, I also remember that Thanksgiving at least avoids the commercialism that surrounds Christmas. I remember that the practice of sharing food with those we love traces back much further than the colonization of this continent. I also remember that the wrongs from that colonization can be recognized and that we have it in our power to make some reparation…however modest.

I remember that marking the time of harvest and the turning of the season has been a human impulse since we have been human and probably before.

This Thanksgiving, my own spiritual discipline is to ask my cynicism to quiet for a bit and find ways to give thanks for the imperfect world.

Words of the Rev. Mark Ward:

As chill winds blast the last autumn

                leaves from the trees,

we gather with new purpose.

In each other’s company,

we find warmth against the approach

of winter’s cold.

We look to the bounty of harvest to

                sustain us while the earth sleeps,

and we attend again to the wider

                circles of relationship,

reminded of the connections on

                which we depend.

In each face,

some softening with age, some blooming

                with maturity,

we see the human story revealed,

the journey we each travel from mystery

                to mystery.

There is cause for gratitude:

For the love we share, even if

                Imperfect and not always fully

                Realized.

Every day of our journeys,

we are given new opportunities to

                accept and to give love.

May the love we share, even if imperfect, be with you and sustain you today and in the days ahead.

Happy Thanksgiving

And Blessings,

Bill