Fr Mark Schultz

Dear Friend,

Happy Thanksgiving! I hope your day is filled with tears of joy and peals of laughter, with grateful remembrances of blessings received, that your day is shot through with vibrant golden threads of thankfulness and praise that come from and lead us back into that Great Pattern of thankfulness that is the Eucharistic feast, that is fellowship with the One who is the Bread of Life. I hope your day thrums and hums with God.

I know some of you are busy with preparations for the day, and I know, too, that there may be others of you for whom that busy-ness would feel most welcome. If you find yourself in Tucson desiring a place of lively fellowship and joy, please please please consider coming to our 11am Eucharist today…and stay for a festive Thanksgiving Feast following our participation in the Heavenly Banquet! You are always welcome here!!

Some of you may know that, every month, I put together a newsletter for those involved in Children, Youth and Family Ministries at Saint Philip’s (if you’d like to be added to the list, let me know!) and I usually try ending the newsletter with a poem or pastoral note related to the tenor of the time / the season in which we find ourselves. Recently, I was looking for a Thanksgiving-themed poem, and while I was able to find quite a few of them, there was something about the majority of the ones I read that seemed a little too pat, a little too expected, a little less given to pitching us toward some sense of the sacramental mysteriousness of the human adventure or of God's own love for us.

And then I found a beautiful, challenging, wondrous-bright poem by the amazing Joy Harjo of the Muscogee Nation…a poem about the mysterious power of the kitchen table: what begins there, what happens there, what ends there. It is perhaps the most gorgeous Thanksgiving poem I've ever read. And on this Thanksgiving Day, I’d like to share it with you. What happens in our kitchens, in our lives, in the world, and in the world beyond is all intricately interwoven, and at any moment in any part of our lives, we may catch a glimpse of the joy with which all that was, is and shall be will be consummated in the bliss that is the love of God. I think this poem speaks to those glimpses—how complicated they are, how necessary they are, how formative they are. On this Thanksgiving Day, I hope you enjoy this poem, “Perhaps the World Ends Here”, by Joy Harjo. You can find it below.

What is your favorite Thanksgiving poem or prayer? Would you consider sharing it with those among whom you find yourself today? Would you consider allowing grace to make of your own life a poem of thanksgiving, a Eucharistic prayer legible to all?

Under the Mercy,
Fr Mark+