Thanksgiving

THURS., NOV. 24, 1983, 6:50 AM
FARM, FRONT OF FIRE

This is the day that your culture designates as one of Thanksgiving, o son, so you must be interested in My observations on this time of celebration. It is not a Christian holiday, “officially”, but a good deal of the thanks given is offered up to Me. So I am a part of the day, even for those who pay Me little heed on most days.

It certainly could be posed that such a day is unnecessary, for each day and every day should be a day of Thanksgiving. For those who acknowledge and follow Me this is true. Yet the practice of remembering and of tradition also is important. Your tradition is that the early American settlers in New England had a special feast of Thanksgiving after their first harvest of crops in that land that was one of milk and honey only in spirit. This was a good and appropriate celebration, a time of remembering hardship and the death of friends and family… and also the harvest that would sustain life and reduce the hardships.

Over the years it has become a tradition, but it always should be celebrated with the remembrance of its origin. The details of that for which you are thankful this day are different from those of the pilgrim time, but fundamentally there is likeness. You should be thankful for physical life and for the spiritual life that underlies and undergirds this obvious existence. You should be thankful for food, for shelter, and for clothing… the necessities of physical life. You should be thankful for family and for friends, even as it is not possible for them all to be with you. (Be thankful for that largest gathering of family in California, even though you cannot be there.)

Be thankful for relative freedom in this land. Freedom is always relative in the earthly sense. (Absolute freedom comes only in that state of enlightenment which is at-onement with Me.) Yet you do enjoy relative political, economic, and social freedom. Many in the world have much less. Pray for them and give thanks for what you have.

In pilgrim times those called Indians were regarded as enemies. They were different in customs and in lifestyle, and they certainly did not acknowledge and worship Me in the Christian way. Still, Thanksgiving was a day of including those “enemies” and offering the hand (and the table) of friendship. On this day, symbolically include your enemies. Bless those who would make destructive war or would provoke your country to strike first. Give thanks for those who could hurt you, yet have not.

Should I be thanked for all of these blessings? Did I really bestow them? Do I deserve the credit? Indirectly, of course, for this earth is My creation, with its balance of life forms, and humans, my most unique creation. Humans have, as part of My creation, the ingenuity and capacity to grow, process, and distribute food, to create many forms of clothing, and many disparate dwelling places. And yet My creation also evidences greed, and an unwillingness to share the abundance of the earth with all. (It is truth, at this time, that those cultures most dedicated, ideologically, to equality of distribution seem to be the most oppressive.)

As I have told you I do not control or predetermine each human act and each incident, human and natural, in the earth. BUT, I am actively involved, so you can never know for certain when something for which you are thankful just “happens” or “is there” and when it is a direct gift from Me.