Notes from my Knapsack 11-12-20

Notes from my Knapsack 11-12-20

Jeff Gill

Small gatherings, large memories

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In two weeks, we come to Thanksgiving, perhaps the one holiday of the year, whether for the religious or the secular, most tied to gathering.

In church circles, if you say let alone sing "we gather together…" you'll hear quickly back "…to ask the Lord's blessing!" For almost anyone, mention of Thanksgiving is less tied to Pilgrims and Plymouth Rock than it is to families and a dinner table of one sort or another., whether with a turkey or some other main course

Most all of my childhood Thanksgiving Day dinners were hosted by now departed family, their homes now in others' hands and even the table and chairs and china now dispersed after my father's passing and the breakup of my parents' household. Oddly enough, I don't recall a single Thanksgiving in the house where I grew up: we were always on the road, to grandmother's house over the river and through the woods, to the great-aunts' condominium, and more recently my parents in Texas for the winter meant my own family would head back to my wife's family, sometimes with a side trip to my sister's.

This year, unprecedentedly, we will be at home. 35 years of marriage, and we can only think of a couple of times we were in our own house for Thanksgiving Day. I've cooked turkeys in other people's ovens, or carried side-dishes down the highway in the trunk carefully wedged, and even made the restaurant pick-up maneuver a couple of times for other households. But starting to prepare in my own kitchen the night before, and giving no thought to how anything I make can be stowed for a long drive, but just carrying things across the dining room… I can barely imagine what to do!

Along with the losses of this year comes the COVID restrictions, looking to be on the increase as we head through November anyhow. So just us at our own home sounds prudent and necessary. This means I need to think through a rich assortment of traditions and recipes and service options, and craft a Thanksgiving for us. It actually feels less like a limitation than it does an opportunity. So many opportunities and obligations are of necessity whittled away, leaving us where we can sit down and reflect on what it means for us to be together.

We will, just three of us, gather together. Three can be together. Twelve or twenty are definitely a familiar sort of togetherness, but three is just fine. And I might make a turkey, or it could be a lasagna with turkey sausage in the meat sauce. I'm not quite sure yet.

We gather together, and we will indeed ask the Lord's blessing, who (as the hymn says) chastens and hastens us, so that God's will might be known to us, and we might pray that the wicked truly will cease oppressing and distressing. At the very least, we will say grace, and give praise to the One who brings us together in twos and threes as much as twenty-sevens and two hundreds, and remember that God "forgets not His own," as we remember those we've sat with at the Thanksgiving table in years past.

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he's definitely cooking up some cranberry sauce at home this year. Tell him your favorite family seasonal recipe at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.