Thanksgiving

A lovely poem from poet Linda McCarriston, called "Thanksgiving."

Every year we call it down upon ourselves,
the chaos of the day before the occasion,
the morning before the meal. Outdoors,
the men cut wood, fueling appetite
in the gray air, as Nana, Arlene, Mary,
Robin—whatever women we amount to—
turn loose from their wrappers the raw,
unmade ingredients. A flour sack leaks,
potatoes wobble down counter tops
tracking dirt like kids, blue hubbard erupts
into shards and sticky pulp when it's whacked
with the big knife, cranberries leap away
rather than be halved. And the bird, poor
blue thing—only we see it in its dead skin—
gives up for good the long, obscene neck, the gizzard,
the liver quivering in my hand, the heart.

So what? What of it? Besides the laughter,
I mean, or the steam that shades the windows
so that the youngest sons must come inside
to see how the smells look. Besides
the piled wood closing over the porch windows,
the pipes the men fill, the beers
they crack, waiting in front of the game.

Any deliberate leap into chaos, small or large,
with an intent to make order, matters. That's what.
A whole day has passed between the first apple
cored for pie, and the last glass polished
and set down. This is a feast we know how to make,
a Day of Feast, a day of thanksgiving
for all we have and all we are and whatever
we've learned to do with it: Dear God, we thank you
for your gifts in this kitchen, the fire,
the food, the wine. That we are together here.
Bless the world that swirls outside these windows—
a room full of gifts seeming raw and disordered,
a great room in which the stoves are cold,
the food scattered, the children locked forever
outside dark windows. Dear God, grant
to the makers and keepers power to save it all.

"Thanksgiving" by Linda McCarriston, from Talking Soft Dutch. © Texas Tech Press, 1984.

Mandy Sayers, Teaching Assistant

So, I thought it'd be a GREAT idea to spend my day off with my former pastor and current mentor/friend, Andy Lunt, being a TA for his Introduction to Preaching class. I thought it wouldn't be tiring because, shoot, we're talking 9 to 12. Manageable. The kids are in school, it's my day off, what's the big deal? Preaching is one of my soul-feeding activities, says I. And I so loved being a student--who wouldn't want to take a turn on the other side of the lectern, and Intro to Preaching is perfect. Pretty sure I could NOT be a TA in Hebrew or anything of that nature..so I'm giving it a shot. 

Of course, I grossly underestimated the amount of work and energy it takes to do this, but in the main, it was a really fabulous idea. It's a huge honor, first of all, to be a Teaching Assistant or indeed a Teaching Anything. These students have paid for a block of time for us to teach them, and time is the one truly irreplaceable commodity. Andy is wise and trustworthy and gifted (and knows me well enough to know "what he's getting" in me). I pretty much stand up there and wave my hands about and say outrageous and true things, designed to enlighten at best and at the very least be something they'll remember.

At first, I was really scared, because I felt unqualified--after all the ink is barely dry on my diploma. I discovered to my horror that I am so adrenaline-filled it is like being out of my body to do this. Dry mouth, slightly dizzy, and Southern Storyteller meets Denise Hopkins meets Ellen Degeneres probably best describes my "teaching style"--minus the dancing. When I worried that I was a little too "much" and that I was probably going to stroke out or get arrested or something by the Teaching Police, my dad said, "My girl, they have Andy if they want wise and sage and sane and steady. If they want hair on fire, what's she gonna say NEXT, well that's what they're paying YOU for." I had to admit, he kind of had a point.

So, it appears I will survive my first semester as a TA. I hope someday I get to have another semester as this IS the sort of thing one gets better at with practice. I marshal everything I have in my arsenal for these new preachers (just as I do when I preach, myself) because a. this is their last chance to do this for practice, to make blunders and try things without actually doing it for "real" and b. as Buechner aptly describes, for maybe 30 seconds, every Sunday, a congregation waits expectantly for a preacher who clears her throat and leans over the sacred desk. For that half minute, they are wondering if we have a truth to tell them, if the Word has devastated us before it has gotten to them (Willimon, I think I have to thank for that), and whether we will indeed bring any good news to bear into their real lives.  One important sign of our Lord's Resurrection is that some cloudy Sunday morning in Dublin, Georgia or Detroit, Michigan or Deale, MD, a preacher is willing to stand up and say "I have seen the Lord" or "We have been lying to ourselves" or "We are called to see this world through the glasses of the widow's mite/prodigal son/Lazarus." There's no more important work. And that's just what I do on my day off. If you think THAT'S wild, you should see what I do the other days of the week.