Thanksgiving Reimagined | November 30, 2025 | Rev. Dr. Kathryn Benton

If the only prayer you said was thank you, that would be enough.

The opening quote is from Meister Eckhart, 13^th century mystic. Highlighting this quote in a recent post, Gianluigi Gugliermetto cautions: 

But let’s not trivialize his sentence. He meant that the essence of prayer is welcoming reality, living it not begrudgingly but fully. There is no need for elaborate petitions to God if one is present, attentive, and accepting. That is the only good ground for a true prayer of thanks. And that ground is possible only after leaving aside idealizations...

Welcoming reality…living it fully. Imagine that…imagine if we were able to live our current reality fully. Imagine if we could look at our history…our individual history, our national history and even our human history realistically. For many of us, this is a tall order. It is no easy task to be present, attentive, and accepting. As fragile human beings, we tend to cling to our idealizations or myths. We have always done that. Perhaps it is a necessary protection…even a way for us to make sense out of the vicissitudes of life…the contradictions that Thurman saw as neither final nor ultimate.

Certainly, Howard Thurman spoke often of our search for community that was in part based on our mythologies. He writes in the book, The Search for Common Ground of the creation myth of the Hopi. He describes the work of the Spider Woman who spoke of the phases of creation as the mystery, the breath of life and the warmth of love. The Spider Woman says that the people she created were made for joy and to give thanks to the creator. Is that what we are thankful for this Thanksgiving time? Are we able to meditate on a sense of gratitude for all we have experienced…the reality and the fullness of it…including the mystery, the breath, the warmth of love?

For me, this holiday tends to uncover some difficult feelings…the contradictions, which led me, I think, to the consideration of gratitude and to the Native American creation myth. In their book, All the Real Indians Died Off: Myths about Native Americans, Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz and Dina Gilio-Whitaker shatter the myths about Native Americans that abound in our culture. We can begin with the traditional story of the Pilgrims. First of all, I have to say that at least one of my ancestors was among this group. This causes me a great deal of pain, as does their eventual owning of slaves. It is causing me pain, I suspect, even when I am not as aware of it, since it is part of my ancestral trauma. And it takes an ability to welcome reality, live it not begrudgingly but fully in order to heal…not easy, but something we all must do if we want a good ground for a true prayer of thanks.

They wrote that it is important to first uncover the backstory of Thanksgiving. They write that the Pilgrims weren’t the first Europeans to come to North America in 1620 and of course weren’t the last. By this time, according to Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, Europeans had been traveling to the North American continent, and founding colonies there, for well over a century. Of course, we also know that others came here as well, including Africans looking for opportunity. The authors write that another myth states that the Pilgrims arrived to an unoccupied ‘wilderness’. The Natives living in that area were mostly farmers and there were an estimated 24-100,000 members of the Wampanoags. The Pilgrims, starving after they arrived, admitted to stealing food from Native graves and homes, spread disease and otherwise took advantage of them. Dunbar-Ortiz goes on to describe a treaty established between the colonists and the Native leaders that was quite short-lived. One of the Native leaders, Squanto, had been kidnapped as a child, sold into slavery and shipped off to England. Upon his return, he found himself the sole male survivor of his village one year before the arrival of the Pilgrims.

Of what transpired on the actual day of Thanksgiving, historians do not all agree, but many suspect that the Natives in the area heard the sound of guns being discharged by the exuberant Pilgrims in celebration of the Harvest. They went to investigate and were then allowed to stay for the meal, which they incidentally helped to provide. Thankful for their warm and loving relationship…not exactly.

But it seems that we may still be able to reimagine the myth…the idealization that in the words of Howard Thurman:

Something deep within reminds [a person] that the intent of the Creator of life and the living substance is that [people] must live in harmony within themselves and with one another and…with all life.

We want to live in harmony…we want to honor the work of the Creator…something deep within is constantly reminding us that the harmony is lost. This loss is described by Frank Waters in the Book of the Hopi. Writing of the fourth world created by Spider Woman, he explains:

The Fourth World, the present one, is the full expression of man’s ruthless materialism and imperialistic will…

It seems this is where my European ancestors lived and where we still live today. But is there a way back…to that harmony that we lost…to our potential that has been unactualized…to a place where we could truly live together in peace? I think the answer is all around us. Thurman describes this as a search. He outlines the Search into Beginnings, the Search in Living Structures, the Search in the Prophet’s Dream, the Search in the Common Consciousness and the Search in Identity. He is, I believe, pointing us in the direction of reimagining the human plight. And a large part of this reimagining has to do with the necessity for understanding our origins and our place as part of creation. Of course, this is the understanding of indigenous people all over the world…it is the understanding that Howard Thurman knew of…part of the wisdom of humanity that it is crucial to finding our way to our place in life…in the life of the universe.

I’d like to close with a powerful poem from Meister Eckhart…certainly a relative of Thurman’s. Entitled, When I Was the Forest, it goes like this…

When I was the stream, when I was the

forest, when I was still the field

when I was every hoof, foot,

fin and wing, when I

was the sky itself,

no one ever asked me did I have a purpose, no one ever

wondered was there anything I might need,

for there was nothing

I could not love.

It was when I left all we once were that

the agony began, the fear and questions came,

and I wept, I wept. And tears

I had never known before.

So I returned to the river, I returned to

the mountains. I asked for their hand in marriage again,

I begged — I begged to wed every object and creature,

and when they accepted,

God was ever present in my arms.

And He did not say,“Where have you

been?”

For then I knew my soul — every soul—

has always held

Him.