Last Friday I got to sit with my five year old as he got his first shot of the Pfizer vaccine. This was a moment of hopefulness for me in the midst of another surge of this pandemic. The vaccine clinic was held at the elementary school gym and after their vaccination the kids were invited to sit at tables with coloring pages and crayons for the fifteen minutes. Coloring pages are the perfect thing for the after-shot release of energy and feeling! What was beautiful to me was the care that the school had put into making this possibility available to families like my own. And the attention to the kid’s experience that was there. It was another one of those moments when you feel the energy of people coming together for good.

This Thanksgiving is once again complicated by the pandemic – another surge threatening plans made when we were hopeful for a very different holiday this year. We can continue to be thankful for all the ways that people continue coming together for good – people here at HHH, people in the community, people around the world – rising to the call to help and care.

And while we cannot be thankful for everything, we can, as Br. David Steindl-Rast reminds us, be thankful in every moment. He invites us into a simple and profound practice he calls, “Stop. Look. Go.” Here are his words:

Most of us — caught up in schedules and deadlines and rushing around, and so the first thing is that we have to stop, because otherwise we are not really coming into this present moment at all, and we can’t even appreciate the opportunity that is given to us, because we rush by, and it rushes by. So stopping is the first thing.

But that doesn’t have to be long. When you are in practice, a split second is enough — “stop.”

And then you look: What is, now, the opportunity of this given moment, only this moment, and the unique opportunity this moment gives? And that is where this beholding comes in.

And if we really see what the opportunity is, we must, of course, not stop there, but we must do something with it: Go. Avail yourself of that opportunity. And if you do that, if you try practicing that at this moment, tonight, we will already be happier people, because it has an immediate feedback of joy.

I always say, not — I don’t speak of the gift, because not for everything that’s given to you can you really be grateful. You can’t be grateful for war in a given situation, or violence or domestic violence or sickness, things like that. There are many things for which you cannot be grateful. But in every moment, you can be grateful.

For instance, the opportunity to learn something from a very difficult experience — what to grow by it, or even to protest, to stand up and take a stand — that is a wonderful gift in a situation in which things are not the way they ought to be. So opportunity is really the key when people ask, “Can you be grateful for everything?” — no, not for everything, but in every moment.

Brother David Steindl-Rast, 2015 interview with Krista Tippett

May you and yours be well and supported today and into this holiday week. And may the blessing of God or all that sustains you, keep you safe, grant you peace and fill you with all that you need, just for today. Amen.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Joel