If you are tasked with offering a Prayer today for Thanksgiving, here’s a participatory reading, based on Rev. Dr. Howard Thurman’s “Thanksgiving Meditation” from November 11, 1958 broadcast on WHDH-TV, Boston, Massachusetts. Do yourself a favor as you cook and listen to the audio of him reading and then preaching via the Howard Thurman Digital Archive at Emory University.
I’ve set this for six voices, but if there are fewer around your table, you can certainly repeat and come back around. Also, you can add more verses or break these up further for more voices, if you need.
A Litany of Thanksgiving
Voice 1:
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.
Voice 2:
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 pharaohs 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.
Voice 3:
For all these, I make an act of Thanksgiving this day.
I finger one by one the messages of hope that awaited me
at the crossroads– the smile of approval from those who held in their hands the reins of my security, the tightening of the grip in a simple shake
when I feared the step before me in the darkness, the whisper in my heart when the temptation was fiercest and
the claims of appetite were not to be denied, the crucial word said,
the simple sentence from an open page when my decision hung in the balance.
Voice 4:
For all these, I make an act of Thanksgiving this day.
I passed before me the mainsprings of my heritage,
the fruits of the labels of countless generations who lived before me
without whom my own life would have no meaning,
the seers who saw visions and dreamed dreams,
the prophets who sensed truth greater than the mind could grasp and whose words would only find fulfillment in the years which they
would never see, the workers whose sweat has watered the trees,
the leaves of which are for the healing of the nations,
the pilgrims who set their sails for lands beyond all horizons,
whose courage made powers into new worlds and far off places,
the savior whose blood was shed with a recklessness
that only a dream could inspire and a god could command.
Voice 5:
For all this, I make an active Thanksgiving this day.I linger over the meaning of my own life and the commitment to which I give the loyalty of my heart and mind– the literal purposes in which I have shared with my loves
and my desires and my gifts, the restlessness which bottoms all I do
with its stark insistence that I have never done my best– I have never dared to reach for the highest– the big hope that never quite deserts me that I and my kind will study war or more, that love and tenderness and all the inner graces of all my affection will cover the light of the children of God
as the waters cover of the sea.
Voice 6:
All these and more than mind can think and the heart can feel,
I make as my sacrament of Thanksgiving to thee,
Our Father in humbleness
of mind and simplicity of heart.
Amen.
RevEverett 