Week of Thanksgiving: Cornucopia

I don't know about the rest of you, but the symbol of the cornucopia has never made much sense to me. Why a horn shaped basket? What did it symbolize?

Turns out, it's a Greek mythology thing. Awesome. So, I decided we needed to teach our kids about the cornucopia.

At the beginning of November, I used my kid's Crayola watercolors and painted a cornucopia that we put on the window. Each day, we wrote down things we were grateful for on little watercolor fruits, vegetables, and meats. It was so fun to see what everyone was grateful for, because you never knew what they were going to say next. Here is a list of my favorites:

• Decay
• Each of us, by name, several times.
• Stove
• "spray"
• "nise voises"
• jammies
• toy saw
• "trick or treat"
• dress ups
• chalk
• "me"

We had such a great time, and every day there was excitement over who got to choose the fruit or vegetable to write on for the day. As thrilled as I am to put up our Christmas decorations this weekend... I was sad as I took down the cornucopia from our window. We have so much to be thankful for.

Week of Thanksgiving: Never Forget

At this time of thanksgiving, let us remember and never forget:

The needy are always with us.

(Especially the 3 year old kind.)

Week of Thanksgiving: Interfaith Thanksgiving Service

Sunday night, in the pouring rain, I drove up Providence Road to a place I'd never been before: Temple Israel at Shalom Park.

A week previous I got an e-mail asking for people to be a choir participating in an Interfaith Thanksgiving Service the Tuesday before Thanksgiving. The rehearsals and performance will be held, this year, at a Conservative synagogue.

That is one bandwagon I jumped right on. Not only that, but I decided to drag our local sister missionaries with me--just for effect. Any excuse to visit a new house of worship is something I'm up for. Not to mention how fun it sounded to sing with people from lots of religions. We Mormons have our Tabernacle Choir, but we will never have the soul of a good, Southern Baptist choir.

I got there right on time, and entered the beautiful building, feeling a little unsure. I saw the stacks of kippot for the men, but reassured myself that they were optional for women, before entering the synagogue.

A group of people sat in the folding chairs, some sitting in little clusters, some sitting alone. Taking a deep breath, I marched down the aisle and introduced myself to a lady sitting by herself. We began to warm up.

Our music directors include a Jewish Cantor, a Universalist Unitarian Music Minister, a music minister from Friendship Baptist Church, and the music pastor at St. Gabriel's Catholic Church, although he is actually Episcopalian. The director from the Baptist congregation is so fun to watch, he jumps up and down all over the stage, which inevitably sends his kippah flying from his head. At which point the most delightful little Jewish lady trots up to the stand in the middle of the song and plunks it back on his head. Repeatedly. And neither of them even miss a beat.

Meanwhile, the Unitarians are crossing out every referal to "mankind" and urging us all to substitute the word for "humankind" so that we're gender inclusive.

At about which point the man from St. Gabriel's starts railing on us for being even slower than the speed of sound and begging us to KEEP UP!!!!

I find myself grinning and laughing and just singing my heart out. My favorite are, of course, the songs in Hebrew, with their lilting melodies and softly accented words.

At the end of the first practice, the music pastors all stood on the stand together. They talked about how they first started meeting over 6 months ago. And how they learned that you haven't learned to live in peace with your neighbors of a different faith until you've sat down and discussed and disagreed and been uncomfortable with each other. Only when you've faced your differences, can you find real friendship and peace. I thought that was beautifully profound.

So, Shalom. Have peace.

Week of Thanksgiving: 2009

I feel like I have been blessed, beyond measure, this year.

As I've been thinking, all day, about the things I'm truly grateful for, my mind has gone back to all of the absolutely phenomenal memories I've been able to make this year with people I absolutely adore. And that is precious to me.

Two years ago, The Spouse and I took a trip to Jamaica to celebrate his birthday. On our second to last day, we traveled up to the west tip of the island. While The Spouse was jumping off cliffs like a crazy person, I was safely bobbing in the azure blue water below. I stretched back and floated, gazing up into the sky as the sun began to sink. I remember closing my eyes and thinking "Contentment. This is what contentment feels like." And I tried to memorize it.

The months that followed brought particularly acute struggles and challenges, and I would find myself, closing my eyes and thinking that word "Contentment" and I was right there in my mind, with the waves softly rising and falling beneath me. It carried me through those months.

And this winter, I can close my eyes and think "Contentment." and I'm there, again, in those waves.

But this year has given me more gifts--the kind that nothing can take. The kind that I will carry with me, even when I grow old and die. I'm roasting marshmallows with my children on a summer night and catching frogs. I'm walking the decks of a beautiful ship with my parents, and chasing Alice in Wonderland with Thing 1. I'm gazing out over the bluest skies on the coast of Maine with a dear friend and wishing for time to slow down. And I'm laying on the slopes of a mountain, resting my head on my spouse's shoulder, gazing at waterfalls and glaciers, with the warm sun on my face.

And no matter where I am, or where I go, I am utterly content.

Week of Thanksgiving: I love this.

I love this. I just do. So if you have a few minutes, you should watch it. I'll be thinking about this question, really thinking about it, for the rest of this week.

Week of Thanksgiving: Lip Balm

Kiddos with their lip balms.

If you couldn't tell, I love Thanksgiving.

A lot.

And it's about more than turkey and pumpkin pie, or even getting together with family. It's about a chance to give sincere thanks for everything that we've been given in preparation for the celebration of Christ's birth in December. I have found that the Christmas Spirit is much more powerful if I have spent a lot of time developing a spirit of gratitude and giving the month before.

All month long, in our house, we've been counting our blessings and putting them in our "cornucopia." (A picture of that will come later this week.) We've talked about pilgrims and the native peoples who helped them to save themselves. We've read our very favorite Thanksgiving books, including The Mousery, An Old Fashioned Thanksgiving, Over the River and Through the Woods, and Pumpkins. We've talked about service and put together boxes for Operation Christmas Child. We've been building up to this week.

Today, to start off the actual week of Thanksgiving, I'm using an idea I got from the blog Mustard Seeds, and we made our own lip balm so we can say "Sweet Words of Thanks."

First, we read the following scriptures and talked about HOW we give thanks...

1 Thessalonians 5:16-18 (Through prayer.)

Psalms 28:7 (Through song.)

Matthew 15:36 (Through service and an "abundance mentality.")

Then we talked about how the way that we give thanks involves our mouths, and how it's good for us to give thanks.

Then we made our own lip balm. There are lots of recipes online (Mustard Seeds has one that uses shortening), I chose to use plain vaseline, but you can also use beeswax.

In our case, I took a tablespoon full of vaseline and mixed it with a dollop of honey and some unsweetened Kool Aid. You can also add food coloring, if you want. Then we put the lip gloss in the little jars you can buy at Walmart for holding beads. The kids added stickers, and we decided who we want to give the lip balms to at church today to say thank you.

The kids loved this activity, and they loved listening for the action words in the scriptures. Today, we're going to use our mouths to give sweet words of thanks!!

MINE!

I want a lot of stuff.

The Spouse doesn't have the "want" gene. Or, if

he does, it's rather recessive. He wants things like a single ice cream sandwich.

This is the only reason our household is solvent.

But back to my wants.

Sometimes, since I can't get the stuff I want, it just helps to write it down. Get it out there. Say "Yes, I want this, but I can't have it."

Currently on my list:

Yeah, yeah, I know. What IS that thing? It's a heat embossing tool from Paper-Source.

I.love.Paper.Source. I crave most of the things in that store. But I've wanted this embossing tool (with some stamps and sparkly embossing powder) for well over a year now. And I've bought all kinds of junk that would've cost the same, but it was the principle of not getting something that was purely a want. But every time I allow myself to go Paper Source (which is rarely, because they close at 6:00 pm...) I put this embossing tool in my basket and walk around with it, like I'm going to buy it. Every time. *sigh*

Next!

This? This is the "Laurie" set from Crate and Barrel. I wish I'd never set eyes on the thing. It's so girly and whimsical. It also happens to perfectly fit Louisa May Alcott's description of dishes from the children's book "An Old Fashioned Thanksgiving." I've been daydreaming about serving pumpkin pie and hot spiced cider with these things. I think they're so beautiful. I know that I would be a better person if I owned them. At least for a day.

Okay, last one. I saw this frame at The Met Museum store in New York. And I broke a commandment right there in the store: I was coveting. I was trying to think of a way, any way, to justify the cost. Isn't it beautiful? It also has additional meaning for me because The Spouse's name means "Beloved." Alas, this picture frame costs $125 dollars. And nobody is e-baying theirs.

It would be so much easier to just want an ice cream sandwich. But even then, ice cream sandwiches aren't gluten free, so I couldn't have one anyway. Might as well want the good stuff.