Editorial - Remarkable potential

Posted November 21, 2007

Oblivious to all our worry and uncertainty, and all the questions for which we have no answers, here comes Thanksgiving Day.

Here is the annual chance to shift one's attention from what is so numbingly difficult, and to attend instead to what is known, what endures, what is possible, to what, in all its remarkable potential, is given us.

We are blessed, for instance, with the opportunity to forge friendships and to make them last, so that when life itself and everything in it has changed, and changed again until it is nearly unrecognizable, there remains a partner who is ever more familiar, ever more comfortable, and ever more dependable.

We are blessed with days like this one when we can turn away from life's daily-ness and do something uncommon yet familiar in the company of family and friends.

We are blessed with the chance to begin again, to re-evaluate old assumptions and to make changes. We can start over. We can abandon old, unrewarding pursuits, and try new challenges. We can rethink and redefine. We are blessed with diversity. Appearance, values, pursuits, language, passions, humor - all different among us.

And we can recognize claptrap for what it is, and good sense for what it is, and determine to have more of the latter and less of the former in our lives.

We have learned, thank goodness, to distinguish between fairness and unfairness, and to practice the former in our dealings with our neighbors.

We possess, though we ignore it sometimes, the instinct to thank God for all we enjoy.

And so we celebrate and enjoy Thanksgiving tomorrow as individuals, families, and as a community. We must acknowledge our good fortune, as well as our hard work to protect our community as a safe, beautiful, prosperous, desirable, and welcoming place to live, in contrast to communities elsewhere, which are so wounded.

Happy Thanksgiving.