A reflection: The table of Giving Thanks

Happy Thanksgiving! We are grateful for you and for all who gather around the ISI table. Fr. Mike Graham, SJ, has generously offered a beautiful reflection on the table of giving thanks, which we share with you in a spirit of joy and hope.

Reflecting thanks giving:

Have you ever noticed how all the major holidays seem to have their specific locations?  Christmas happens in the living room or the family room or wherever it is that the Christmas tree shines in all its wonder and can preside over the festivities.  Fourth of July is a back deck or back yard celebration, where people gather first around the grill and then scatter across the yard for fireworks.  Halloween happens on front porches and at front doors as trick-or-treaters ring the bell and then practically burst out of their skins in excitement when you appear with that bowl of candy.  But Thanksgiving happens in our dining rooms and its centerpiece is the table.

Imagine that those tables of ours could talk, that you could pull up a chair to one of its own chairs and reminisce a bit with it, swap memories.   What all has your table seen and heard over the course of its life with you?  And just what might it have to say to you as a result?

Looking at me now, it’s hard to believe that once upon a time I was brand new, but once upon a time I was.  Long before the chips and the coffee rings and the water stains.   I arrived fresh from the store and you beamed with pride over me.  I remember the way you looked at me—full of hope and expectation of what you’d be able to do now that you had me.  The family celebrations you’d host.  The dinner parties you’d throw.  And how I’d be in the center of it all.  I was pretty nervous at the time, I have to admit, did my best to conceal the shaking in my legs lest you think I wasn’t up to the task.  But all things considered, it’s worked out pretty well over the years, I’d say.  I hope you think so too.  

To be sure, I saw an awful lot of exactly the things you bought me for.  Parties and dinners and special celebrations, too many to count.  Holiday dinners with your grandmother’s china, for example.  I felt so honored whenever those delicate handed-down plates and cups showed up and brought all their special, sacred memories along with them.  And the big parties with the buffet spreads that spilled over me and onto the sideboard.  I watched so many centerpieces and flower bouquets come and go that I lost track of them—fall, winter, summer, spring, and any holiday you care to name.  The occasional drip of candlewax that you had to scrape off (and thank you very much for doing that!).  I have a special fondness for the big holidays where the whole family gathered together and relatives and in-laws besides and you’d crowd in all around me and bow your heads and get all quiet for a few grateful moments, and I’d join in the grace with you before the meal, before the noise that just comes with being a family started.  How I always loved that noise, the sound a family makes when it’s being a family.

But of all the times, I think the times I treasure most were the ordinary times, watching you and the rest of the family.  How it was just the two of you at first and then how the family grew, one by one, as the kids arrived.  Those high chairs took the worst of it, but I’ve survived my own share of pounding silverware and glasses and plates as well.  All those platters of food, the family favorites and the things you thought sounded good and so you gave them a try and mostly they worked out. And the birthday parties—my God, the birthday parties!  Those were always such fun, after the dinner plates were cleared away and the lights went low and the cake and candles arrived and the singing started.  I got such a kick out of humming right along, and you never even noticed it!  

Quieter times, too.  Early morning newspaper and coffees, before the kids got up.  Or those times the two of you would sit up after the kids had gone to bed, looking serious and concerned, worried about things you didn’t want the kids to hear about, and I always kept your secrets.  Or other quiet times, the ones that came after cross words and people just stared hard at their plates and ate their dinners without scarce so much as a “pass the salt.”  Those times always passed, though, didn’t they.  Funny in a way to look back on them now.  What got argued over seemed so important at the time—but now?  I hardly even remember what those cross words were about.  Do you?  I didn’t think so!

All the conversations I’ve been a silent partner to.  Settling down this one or that one’s anxieties over whatever it was that particular day.  Even I lose track after a while.  And sad times, too, something else that it would be hard for me to count.  Bad news had a way of finding you in one of my chairs, sitting down, on the phone, talking quietly, slowly, taking it in, whatever it was that you had to take in.  And afterwards, how you just sat there for the longest time sometimes, staring out the window.  I always wished I could somehow comfort you better at those times, and so I tried extra hard to be the table you needed me to be then, just so there’d be one less thing for you to worry about.

So many other times, too many times to count.  The kids pretending I was a tent or a fort and playing beneath me.  Groaning under the weight of homework and school projects and taxes and college applications.  Early morning breakfasts and afternoon snacks, often with a little spilt milk along the way. All those jack-o’-lanterns carved, Easter eggs dyed, presents wrapped (not only for Christmas but especially then).  And those of bags of groceries?  That has to be a number known only to God (and maybe not even to him).  I certainly can’t count them!

Holding things steady when all the lights were turned out for the night and all of you went to bed and the house settled into its late-night stillness.  I always loved that time of the day, standing guard while you all slept.  It was such a magical time of day.  You probably never knew this, but that’s when we’d all talk about our days and talk about you, share our memories:  the sofas and the easy chairs, the dressers and the end-tables, the carpets and the clocks and the pictures and the rugs.  We’d all share with one another what we’d seen during the course of the day, catch each other up on whatever the news happened to be.  But mostly, we’d agree once again what an honor it was—what an honor it is—to be of service to you.  To accompany you and your special family through all the ups and downs of life.  To help you handle whatever came to you.  To witness with you the grace of God as it took shape in all the specifics of your days, because if you look at it just right—if you look at it the way we do—there isn’t a moment of your ordinary-appearing, day-in-day-out lives that isn’t shot through with the quiet grandeur of God.  Not a moment.  We’re all lucky to be with you, we are.  But me?  I’m the luckiest one of all, I think.  Because none of the rest of them is in the middle of it all, in the way that I am.

And so, yeah, I’m not the young table I once was, but I’m also kind of proud of those chips and those coffee rings and those water stains.  They’re a little like the lines in your own face, your hair now that it’s gone gray.  They’re marks of character, of distinction, I like to think, and I wouldn’t trade them for a thing.  The memories alone are worth more than money can buy.  And so once again, this Thanksgiving, what I’m most thankful for is you, for all the grace I’ve been privileged to see.  Grace-in-slow-motion, maybe, but grace nonetheless. When you all gather around this year’s turkey and bow your heads and get all quiet, that’s what I’ll be praying my own thanksgiving for.  To continue being able to witness all your grace-in-slow-motion, as long as you’ll have me. Just don’t drop the sweet potatoes this year like you did a few years back, huh?  I’m getting a little too old for that kind of thing.

But … that’s silly, isn’t it.  Isn’t it?  Tables can’t talk, can they.  Can they?  They don’t have memories, do they.  Do they?