Bill's Comments

When we give thanks, we start closest to us and extend outward. Sometimes we get no further than our family boundaries, sometimes we see the expanse of all creation. Perhaps it is less important about what particular details we personally choose to be thankful for, as it is to focus on being thankful, to recognize that we receive much that is given freely whether from family, the Founding Fathers, the military, nature, or God.

Gratitude is humbling. It causes us to see that we survive and thrive not just through our own efforts, but also through the gifts and cooperation of others. John Donne took it to the extreme when he wrote:

No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friend's or of thine own were: any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.

In one sense he was right, but yet in another wrong. For there are those who would destroy us and we cannot be part of them without accepting self-destruction. And it is because of those that would destroy us that we give thanks to those who protect us.

So today when we gather with our families, whether joyfully and willingly or not, let us be thankful for all that we can be, and remember that Thanksgiving came from the beginnings of the greatest nation that has ever graced the face of the Earth, and that part of our greatness are the humble beginnings and the beliefs that still come down to us today. We are the only country in the world that every year is grateful for the survival of one of our founding colonies. As long as we maintain that gratitude and hold fast to our beginnings, we will survive and prosper.

May God bless all of us and the United States of America.