Bottomless Blessings

On the eve of Thanksgiving I will take a moment to count my blessings. I can tell you that last week, at peak fall color, I got to sit on my couch in my living room around noon and watch the gold fall from the trees and pool at their bases. I know that God cushioned the blow for them when they came to rest. I am blessed every time I get to witness, unhurried, earth’s cycle and glory.

I am blessed. I can’t be afraid to say it in fear that it will go away. Alternatively, I read in an article by a 9/11 widow that she believed that by voicing the blessings she and her husband shared in love and life they were insuring themselves against tragedy. Perhaps nothing can protect us from harm. The only thing we do know is that we must get back up after tragedy, after failing, after hitting bottom.

The blessing of abundance is due every human. So while I list my joys I need to keep in mind my brothers and sisters who are not partaking in the feast today or tomorrow. Yes, I love my family. My children are love in flesh. The amazing gift they give is they show me that the human heart’s capacity for love is bottomless. I am grateful for friendship, excellent health and my church community. I love my books and my Seminary and the silly things that make me smile and take my mind off of the hungry world for just a minute.

What about this hungry world? Mark Winne recently wrote an article in the Washington Post about canned compassion. This is a wonderful term aptly describing our holiday overindulgence of both cake and compassion. Today we would like the hungry fed but as Winne states, this “cycle of need -- always present, rarely sated, never resolved -- will continue.” It will continue past Thursday and into shopping frenzy Friday. I don’t mean to judge. I like to shop too. I like the things wrapped in pretty papers that don’t change any systems or people for the better. I understand that trying to fix poverty is much more difficult than dropping cans of corn and boxes of pasta into a plastic bin. However, we must understand, and care once we understand, that these offerings are maintenance. Winne asserts that the donors and those relying on them are “trapped in an ever-expanding web of immediate gratification that offered the recipients no long-term hope of eventually achieving independence and self-reliance.” Most people are too tired or too disinterested in the “task of harnessing the political will needed to end hunger in the United States.”

Food insecurity is one symptom of the larger problem of poverty and if we continue down the endless road of creating more and more food banks for the ever increasing hungry population then we are merely helping to dig a deeper hole for us all.

I believe that the abundance in our lives is meant to be shared. It is not meant to shrink our hearts out of fear or inspire tighter fists around our coins. Our abundance is tied up to the abundance of our neighbor and stranger. This Thanksgiving I pray that the blessing of compassion does not stop with a can of soup for compassion born of love is bottomless, creative and hopeful for those in need of more than just a sandwich and a prayer. Let us, let me, have the courage today and tomorrow and after the philanthropy party has ended to stare hunger and its begetter in the face. If even a few of us named it and demanded change the lines would shorten and all of our blessings would grow.