Thanksgiving 2023

Listen to the sermon by clicking the play button above.

Rev. Michelle LaGrave and Rev. Chris Jimmerson
November 19, 2023
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
www.austinuu.org

As we enter into this season of gratitude, we’ll explore the story of Thanksgiving from some new perspectives.

Chalice Lighting

This is the flame we hold in our hearts as we strive for justice for everyone. This is the light we shine upon systems of oppression until they are no more. This is the warmth that we share with one another as our struggle becomes our salvation.

Call to Worship

FOR WHAT SHALL WE GIVE THANKS
by Rev. Laura Horton-Ludwig

The wheel of the year has turned again.
Once more the Thanksgiving season has arrived.
How shall we sing our song of gratitude now?
For what shall we give thanks?

For this moment;
for friends near and far;
for our breath;

for love;
for courage and clarity;
for strength;
for delight;
for laughter;
for beauty;

for the tables round which we gather;
for the food we enjoy with friends,
seasoned with love and memory;

for the sun and moon and stars in the sky;
for the trees who have seen so much
and still stand proud,
stretching themselves to the sky;

for the bright voices of children;
for the wisdom of elders;
for actions that bless the world;
for hard work that makes a difference;

for music and art and celebration;
for generosity;
for compassion;
for endurance;
for joy;
for hope.

For all these things, we give thanks as we worship together.

Affirming Our Mission

Together we nourish souls, transform lives, and do justice to build the Beloved Community.

Reading

THANKSGIVING AS A DAY OF MOURNING
Rev. Myke Johnson

In 1617, a few years before English settlers landed, an epidemic began to spread through the area that became southern New England. It likely came from British fishermen, who had been fishing off the coast for decades. By 1620, ninety to ninety-six percent of the population had died. It decimated the tribes, and left many of their villages empty.

One of those villages was Patuxet. When the English settlers arrived in Plymouth Harbor they found a cleared village with fields recently planted in corn. This was a big part of the reason they chose it for their settlement. All of the village’s people had died from the epidemic, except for Tisquantum, whom we know as Squanto. We never really hear the whole story about Squanto. We hear he taught the settlers how to plant corn and fish and hunt the local area. But how was it that he spoke English? Here’s the story as told by James W. Loewen:

As a boy, along with four Penobscots, he was probably stolen by a British captain in about 1605 and taken to England. There he probably spent nine years, two in the employ of a Plymouth merchant who later … helped him arrange a passage back to Massachusetts.

He was to enjoy home life for less than a year … In 1614, a British slave raider seized him and two dozen fellow Indians and sold them into slavery in Malaga, Spain. Squanto escaped from slavery … made his way back to England, and in 1619 talked a ship captain into taking him along [as a guide] on his next trip to Cape Cod.

Squanto walked to his home village, only to make the horrifying discovery that he was the sole member of his village still alive. All the others had perished in the epidemic two years before.

Perhaps this was why Tisquantum was willing to help the Plymouth Colony, which had settled in his people’s village. Or perhaps he was there to keep an eye on them.

The settlers, too, lost half their people during the first hard winter. There were only fifty-three settlers who survived until the harvest festival that was later declared to be the first Thanksgiving.

It was a brief moment of tentative peace. One generation later, the English settlers and the Wampanoag were at war. For many Native people in our time, the day called Thanksgiving has become a Day of Mourning, for the hundreds of years of losses suffered by their people.

Sermon

Michelle LaGrave

We are a people of many lands, you and me. Human nature being what it is, many of us have migrated from place to place over time; some of us to many places. And for those of us who have not, our ancestors surely have. These migrations may have occurred in the last few generations or centuries ago, they may have been chosen or forced, by war or political will or economic necessity or for some other reason. And if we go far enough back in time, those of us who are indigenous and those of us who are not, all migrated out of Africa. (Unless, of course, you are worshipping with us from somewhere in Africa, which is not outside the realm of possibility these days!)

As a people, united by this hour or so of worship, we have many relationships with and stories about the land on which we live, love, work, and play. I am, btw, using the word “land” intentionally. I want us to reflect, at least for a little while, on the land itself, the land you personally know, the land you have experienced, walked on, rolled on, sat on, laid down on, crawled on, travelled upon. Not the whole earth, which none of us has experienced, and not the place names and designations we know the land by, at least not yet.

Take a moment to imagine the land of your birth, the land of your growing up years. How do you know it? By its bus system or subway system? By watching it roll by from a car window? By playing in a yard, or a city park, or on a playground? By swimming in its rivers or camping in its woods? By the ways in which it provided sustenance or recreation? By the ways it required work or encouraged play? By the relationships you had with its people, your neighbors, family, and friends? How did you know the land, these places of your birth and your growing up years? Do you still know it?

I grew up in a place far to the northeast of here, a land of steep hills and small mountains with a river that flowed in the valley below; a place of seasons with summers plenty hot enough for swimming and camping and picnicking, falls filled with beautiful, vibrant, colorful leaves for raking and playing, winters with plenty of snow, every winter, for sledding and building snowmen and shoveling, and springs filled with pussywillows and colorful flowers and Easter egg hunts.

I knew the land, mostly by walking and playing upon it. I walked to school, almost every day, I walked to the homes of my family and friends, to my church and the library and corner stores and most anywhere I wanted to go. Sometimes, I rode my bike. I knew all the shortcuts, the paths where the roads didn’t go, the stairs cut into the sides of the hills, the bricks of one seemingly magical road, the playgrounds and parks and athletic fields, and I knew who most of my neighbors were. I knew the land and, I daresay, the land knew me. The land shaped me into who I am today. I am grateful for this land, the land of my birth.

The land. [big breath} Thinking about the land, especially these days, isn’t a simple trip down memory lane or a nice little hit of nostalgia. It can get complicated. And it’s a deeply spiritual exercise. The place I am from is called Naugatuck, Connecticut. I love the names of my hometown and home state. Naugatuck, Connecticut. Can you hear it? The names are not English. They come from the Algonquian language group. Naugatuck means lone tree and it was probably the name of a small Paugusset village along the banks of the Naugatuck River. What I love about these names, is that they reflect one small piece of authentic heritage that colonization did not completely wipe away. As a child, I liked to wonder about these people and what their lives were like before my ancestors came to live on their land. These names are a small, tiny, token, but I love to say them because they feel to me like an honoring of the land and its people from long before white folk like me learned about land acknowledgements.

For those of you who are new to the practice, land acknowledgements are statements made by non-indigenous groups or institutions recognizing the people on whose ancestral lands the group lives, works, and plays. They are not meant to be empty statements made after a quick Google search, but rather meaning-full statements that coincide with a group’s commitment to doing the work of repair and reconciliation. This is deep spiritual work that requires a long process of both self-examination and study. (Yes, it’s a little too easy to get wrapped up in the study and learning aspects of this work and neglect the self-examination piece.)

Here, in the place now called Austin, Texas, we might begin a land acknowledgement by expressing gratitude to the Tonkawa, Jumanos, Coahuiltecan, Comanche, Apache, and all others on whose ancestral lands we now, live, work, play, and worship for their stewardship of these lands. We might then study the history and the prehistory of these lands and the people who ranged upon them as well as the current context in which they live. We might then engage in trust building and relationship building to begin the work of repair and reconciliation. And if you and your family is indigenous to this area, you might begin to consider, if you haven’t already, what it is you might need or want from such a process.

That is in addition to doing our personal work, of course; work that can look a variety of ways depending on our individual identities. For me, this work feels especially complicated at this time of year as I prepare to celebrate Thanksgiving. One thread of my family story is that I am descended from Pilgrims who arrived on the Mayflower. One of whom, my many greats (11 to be exact) grandfather was William Brewster, the spiritual leader of their little congregation. I won’t pretend that I am done doing my personal work around this family history. I have been working on it for years now. One thing I can share with you that has been helpful is to consciously shift to a post-modern way of thinking and remember that there is no single truth. There are many truths. One truth is that the Pilgrims represent the beginning wave of colonialism on these lands and all that is inherently wrong with that. Another truth is that the Pilgrims represent the beginning wave of freedom of religion in what eventually became the United States of America and they risked their lives to do it. These are two of the many, many gifts that I received from my ancestors – one story has not been told often or understood well enough and the other has been told too often and in too simplified a fashion, one story requires of me repair and reconciliation, the other requires gratitude. While neither story can be told easily, both can be done joyfully.

However you plan to spend the actual day of Thanksgiving, I encourage you to spend some time in spiritual practice and personal reflection this coming week. There is much to think and to wonder about. What is your personal relationship to the lands on which you live, work, and play now? What is your ancestral story in relationship to this land? What comes next?

Whatever that is, let us keep gratitude at the center. No matter our individual stories, we all, we all. .. drink from wells we did not dig and are warmed by fires we did not build. And remember, that while that early harvest celebration in 1621 was not the first, and while no one knew how soon after things would go very wrong, that one Thanksgiving feast was celebrated all together, in peace, and with much gratitude. May we learn to do so again. With blessings on your holiday.

Amen and Blessed Be.

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