For many years I always cooked Thanksgiving dinner for our whole family and for friends away from their homes. Before our meal, children read various inspirational passages and this beautiful prayer by great Black theologian Howard Thurman, A Litany of Thanksgiving. After my sister Olive moved back to our hometown, we continued this tradition for many more years as we gathered to celebrate Thanksgiving with her in Bennettsville, South Carolina. She too loved this prayer, found in his book Meditations of the Heart. It is an expression of thanks for all that has sustained us in the past and for the hope and promise of tomorrow.
I share it here once again as I have over the years with its simple and profound sense of gratitude, and the eternal hope that our kind “will study war no more, that love and tenderness and all the inner graces of Almighty affection will cover the life of the children of God as the waters cover the sea.”
Today, I make my Sacrament of Thanksgiving.
I begin with the simple things of my days:
Fresh air to breathe,
Cool water to drink,
The taste of food,
The protection of houses and clothes,
The comforts of home.
For all these I make an act of Thanksgiving this day!
I bring to mind all the warmth of humankind that I have known:
My mother’s arms,
The strength of my father,
The playmates of my childhood,
The wonderful stories brought to me from the lives of many who talked of days gone by when fairies and giants and all kinds of magic held sway;
The tears I have shed, the tears I have seen;
The excitement of laughter and the twinkle in the eye with its reminder that life is good.
For all these I make an act of Thanksgiving this day.
I finger one by one the
