You can change the world with a hot bath,
if you sink into it from a place of knowing
you are worth profound care,
even when you are dirty and rattled.
Who knew?
~Anne Lamott from Small Victories
A hot bath is a most welcome gift to a dirty rattled soul and in turn, it is a gift to everyone around me. I may not even know how grimy I’ve gotten, how smelly and offensive.
Yet there is profound care in the simplicity of being cleansing. I am so in need and the world deserves a cleaner me.
Time out of mind
at this turn of the seasons
when the hardy oak leaves rustle in the wind
and the frost gives a tang to the air
and the dusk falls early
and the friendly evenings
lengthen under the heel of Orion,
it has seemed good to our people
to join together in praising the Creator and Preserver,
who has brought us by a way that we did not know
to the end of another year.
In observance of this custom,
I appoint Thursday, the twenty-sixth of November,
as a day of public Thanksgiving
for the blessings that have been our common lot
— for all the creature comforts:
the yield of the soil that has fed us
and the richer yield from labor of every kind
that has sustained our lives
— and for all those things,
as dear as breath to the body,
that nourish and strengthen our spirit
to do the great work still before us:
for the brotherly word and act;
for honor held above price;
for steadfast courage and zeal
in the long, long search after truth;
for liberty and for justice
freely granted by each to his fellow
and so as freely enjoyed;
and for the crowning glory and mercy of peace upon our land;
— that we may humbly take heart of these blessings
as we gather once again with solemn and festive rites
to keep our Harvest Home.
~Connecticut Governor Wilbur Cross — Thanksgiving Proclamation November 26, 1936
These words written almost 80 years ago this day still ring true.
Then a country crushed under the Great Depression,
now a country staggering under a Great Depression of the spirit~
ever more connected electronically,
yet more isolated from family, friends, faith,
more economically secure,
yet emotionally bankrupt.
May we humbly take heart
in the midst of creature comforts
we hardly acknowledge~
that we are able, in our abundance,
to care for others in need, just as
God, in His everlasting recognition
of our perpetual need of Him,
cares for us,
even when we don’t believe
we need Him.
