What we give thanks for

[Guest guest]

Thanksgiving is actually a holiday about deliverance from " what they

did to us. " Essentially, they wouldn't let us practice our religion.

And people from every religion always have good cause to give thanks

for that particular kind of deliverance, because everybody got

persecuted for their religion at one time or another.

To most of us, religions seem very different. Some seem strange, and

violently oriented, annoyingly evangelical, or pathologically

dogmatic. And yet, when a religion works for somebody, people of all

religions probably end up giving thanks for the same things.

But there's a whole personal level of thankfulness here that anybody

for whom a religion worked always taps into. So if you're finding

that you simply don't feel thankful for any of the following personal

things, maybe the religion that you were born into, adopted, or maybe

even immunics hasn't started working for you in the real, spiritual

sense yet.

Here are some things I noticed for myself -- I've been delivered from:

· Ignoring people's needs.

· Judging people's actions and being angry with them when they mess

up, or when I think they messed up -- their clarity, wonderfulness,

effectiveness and skill are all too glaringly obvious to me now.

· Interfering with people having fun in favor of pushing toward some

real or imagined result that will probably happen anyway.

· " Helping " people as a way of trying to get what I want from them, or

of having them become who I want them to be.

· Addictive eating and drinking.

· Addictive sex.

· Uncalmness and unclarity.

· Not having a dog.

I don't know whether American Muslims celebrate Thanksgiving, but if

they do, and thank God for deliverance before I eating, I bet they

thank her for stuff like what I just said. And I bet so do Jews,

Christians, Hindus, Buddhists. What do Buddhists eat on Thanksgiving?

Brown rice with giblet gravy?

Oh, and don't forget to order some CDs now for Christmas presents.

http://www.wayimmune.org/00open/contents/1_shop.html

In the compassion and humor of God,

Bayard