Another Thanksgiving Reflection

Sister Joan Chittister, a Benedictine Sisters, reflected upon the state of our country following the election. I share with you her  Thanksgiving Prayer, remembering the U.S. prior to this election  She writes:

Creator God, we thank you and praise you

for the opportunity to have lived in a country open to the community of nations and their gifts to us rather than espousing a national political goal of living in isolation from them.

We thank you and praise you

for the memory of a United States where difference, it seemed, was finally seen as the lifeblood of our future, rather than a threat to the present;

We thank you and praise you

for a government that strove to embrace the new while keeping the best of the old rather than seek to revive a past long gone;

We thank you and praise you

for a country in which the role of religion was to grow our spirits rather than feed our fears or capture and control our politics.

We thank you and praise you

for a people of many colors and cultures and gifts who enriched one another's understanding of life rather than set out to set one against the other.

We thank you and praise you

for a country that sought to treat both women and men as equals rather than continue to shape a society in which men were to be privileged and women were meant to be preyed upon;

We thank you and praise you

for a country that attempted to help those who could not help themselves rather than abandon the needy for the sake of increasing the profits of the wealthy;

We thank you and praise you

for a nation that sought by reaching out to others, by defending the oppressed and supporting the defenseless to become a real moral leader of the free world rather than exploit the weak and reject the desolate for the sake of national aggrandizement.

Finally, we thank you and praise you

for those who have led us with noble vision and compassionate hearts. We give thanks for their great respect for democracy and deep commitment to the common good rather than to partisan politics. It is to them we owe the ongoing unity of differences in this land. It is in their names and through their spirit that we seek unity again in our now divided country.

From where I (Sister Joan Chittister) stand, it is on those things that the future of this already great nation depends.

She writes: Happy Thanksgiving. May the memory of the past great vision of this country give us all the energy and strength it will take to revive that vision again. It is those ideals and that kind of community covenant that dries my own tears.

[Joan Chittister is a Benedictine sister of Erie, Pa.]