“How Shall We Give Thanks”

 

by Rev. James Farrell

Most people are familiar with Mark Twain. He is certainly a celebrated American author. The kind of guy like a present-day Steven King or Danielle Steel that could put anything to paper and it would get published …simply because he wrote it.

Well, Mark Twain wrote a poem around the turn of the 20^th century that he couldn’t get published…at least not then, and it still lingers in general obscurity.

It was his Poem, “War Prayer”. I may share it in its entirety with you at another time but the idea of the poem is like this. The setting is a church during the civil war, so for Twain’s contemporaries that would be a bit more than 35 years before he penned the poem. In this church setting everyone is excited and anticipatory as they get ready to send their young men off to fight for right.

It was a time when, in the churches, the pastors preached devotion to flag and country and invoked the God of Battles, beseeching ‘God’s aid’ in our good cause in outpouring of fervid eloquence which moved every listener.

Twain says in his poem, “It was indeed a glad and gracious time, and the half dozen rash spirits that ventured to disapprove of the war and cast a doubt upon its righteousness straightway got such a stern and angry warning that for their personal safety's sake they quickly shrank out of sight and offended no more in that way.”

Following Sunday service folks would be leaving for the battle front and in this mix of jubilation and heightened emotions the pastoral prayer began which beseeched God to bring honour and valor to the gathered volunteers. Success and glory and victory against the foe was prayed for.

It was then that “An aged stranger entered and moved with slow and noiseless steps up the main aisle, his eyes fixed upon the minister, his long body clothed in a robe that reached to his feet, his head bare, his white hair descending in a frothy cascade to his shoulders, his seamy face unnaturally pale, pale even to ghastliness. With all eyes following him and wondering, he made his silent way; without pausing, he ascended to the preacher's side and stood there, waiting."

"God's servant and yours has prayed his prayer. Has he paused and taken thought? Is it one prayer? No, it is two—one uttered, the other not. Both have reached the ear of Him Who hearth all supplications, the spoken and the unspoken. Ponder this—keep it in mind. If you beseech a blessing upon yourself, beware! lest without intent you invoke a curse upon a neighbor at the same time.

If you pray for the blessing of rain upon your crop which needs it, by that act you are possibly praying for a curse upon some neighbor's crop which may not need rain and can be injured by it.

"You have heard your servant's prayer—the uttered part of it. I am commissioned by God to put into words the other part of it—that part which the pastor, and also you in your hearts, fervently prayed silently. And ignorantly and unthinkingly? God grant that it was so!

You heard these words: 'Grant us the victory, O Lord our God!' That is sufficient. The whole of the uttered prayer is compact into those pregnant words. Elaborations were not necessary. When you have prayed for victory you have prayed for many unmentioned results which follow victory—must follow it, cannot help but follow it. Upon the listening spirit of God [the Father] fell also the unspoken part of the prayer.

God commandeth me to put it into words. Listen!

"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.”

His poem concludes: "Ye have prayed it; if ye still desire it, speak! The messenger of the Most High waits."

Of the aged man with white long hair, It was believed afterward that the man was a lunatic, because there was no sense in what he said.

Too often people connect with their God through what they feel or think they can get out of God. Jesus clearly identified this in his comments to those hangers-on who were privy to the miracle of the Loaves and fishes. Feed us, Jesus, Feed us, was the cry of their hearts.

For our part, we watch with horror as the aid intended for those in Haiti is hijacked and “the gift” turns into graft.

With media bombarding us with the reality that the world was duped into the war in Iraq, and that corporate profiteering reaches as high as the White House, I think the opportunity of this day to refocus on what is really important—in prayers and in thanksgiving, is crucial.

Yes, I know Twain’s poem is harsh for Thanksgiving; but giving thanks is much like that “war prayer.” Thank you God for the wealth I enjoy…as the world’s population becomes poorer and multinational corporations function as if there was no God and no accountability but to make some greedy few, very rich. 

Thank you God that I enjoy peace while much of the world has never known a peaceful moment…thank you God for the harvest when drought and pestilence and flood continues to wipe out countless crops throughout the world and our insistence on the development of modern grains has all but wiped out the genetic ancestral crops that are hardy, require few inputs, and have kept civilization alive for millennia without genetic modification or genetic copywriting.

When we think beyond ourselves, our prayers change, our thanksgiving changes and it should…

So let’s be sure what Thanksgiving celebration is not:

Thanksgiving should not be a day for thanking God for affluence while others go hungry. The notion that it is God who gives affluence to some and poverty to many not only ignores the role humans have played in arranging patterns of affluence and poverty, but flies in the face of the God of love and justice. Nor should it be a time to claim God’s special blessing on any nation.

As a minority religious group, the Pilgrims knew only too well the problems that occur when the interests of God and nation are identified by a dominant religious group.

As a day that gives voice to our highest ideals, Thanksgiving can be a time to remember with gratitude and humility that we alone are not responsible for whatever bounty is in our lives.

It can be a time to confess that part of our bounty has come at the expense of others, including first nations folks, farm workers in this and other lands, and hosts of others we do not even know.

It can also be a time to share what we have with others, and include in our celebrations those who would otherwise be alone.

Finally, Thanksgiving can be a time to commit ourselves to creating a world where hungry children are fed, the homeless are provided with shelter, and those who suffer discrimination because of race, sex, religion, or age are respected.

“Thank you God that, in the strength you give me, I might make a difference in the life of another whose life needs a touch, that by virtue of your recognized presence in my life, I may share with another the wonder I have found.

Thank you God that in the midst of my own pains and confusions I wander this—your earth—as one who wanders not alone but in and with the spirit of an amazing God who loves unconditionally and invites us to do the same.

Thank you God for the opportunity to praise you while I have life and breath. Amen.”