As our community wends its way toward the end of the year, I send a note from a beautiful poet Malcolm Guite: Thanksgiving. I thought it may encourage you to notice the truth behind all the appearances in our lives – the frenzy at work, the ‘things’ in the shopping centres, the meaning in our kitchens and round our dining tables. To look for the “light in every face” (including your own in the mirror). We all are made with this light inside us – ready to connect to each other (and to the One in the messy manger).

Can I encourage you to rest, to revive, to encourage and connect to yourself and others. To laugh and to play, to be patient and kind as family gathers and frays and strains – lets be thankful for the people who have shared our year. 

Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving starts with thanks for mere survival,
Just to have made it through another year
With everyone still breathing. But we share
So much beyond the outer roads we travel;
Our interweavings on a deeper level,
The modes of life embodied souls can share,
The unguessed blessings of our being here,
The warp and weft that no one can unravel.

So I give thanks for our deep coinherence
Inwoven in the web of God’s own grace,
Pulling us through the grave and gate of death.
I thank him for the truth behind appearance,
I thank him for his light in every face,
I thank him for you all, with every breath.

Malcolm Guite