Thanksgiving News Headlines

Posted on November 23, 2006

“President Bush Pardons Thanksgiving Turkey”

Oh, no! It is tempting, this almost irresistible urge to wax clever, to get sucked into a wormhole of swirling simile and mixed but not shaken metaphor that drips like grease from a baking pan. But I won’t.

But I did find reason to give thanks in Boston last Sunday, and even submit to a pang of patriotism. Stealing a construction from faux-newscaster Stephen Colbert, “churchiness” is not one of my qualities, but when a man in a powdered wig invites you to join him in a one dose cocktail of Thanksgiving and freedom in the place from which the Boston Tea Party was launched, you can’t resist.

(Bush doesn’t have any non-gobbler turkeys to pardon yet, but wait ‘til the indictments come down and wait ’til his last week in office….ERR…STOP IT! SLAP ME SILLY!)

On December 16, 1773, five thousand ranting colonists gathered at Old First Meeting House to protest the King’s tea tax and from there flocked to the docks to toss the tea into Boston harbor. Each Thanksgiving, Old South Church, which was founded here but moved to the city’s Back Bay section after the Great Fire of Boston in 1872, returns to its roots for “A Service of Remembrance and Thanksgiving.” Members of this congregation have included Samuel Adams, and Benjamin Franklin.

I settled into a pew, a total stranger among people who obviously knew each other, who smiled, were welcoming, who turned around and shook my hand. The man in the powdered wig stood up and read a proclamation from Governor Mitt Romney (who couldn’t be there). A few snickers rose from the congregation. Then the service began with a call to prayer:

Leader:

“In a time when the chasm widens and deepens between the haves and have nots; when an AIDS pandemic stalks the world, when hunger afflicts tens of millions, when whole populations live under the pall of terror and warfare—we beg you.”

People:

“Have mercy upon us, O God.”

Leader:

“God of grace and God of glory, we ask your forgiveness and pray we may recast our priorities to more nearly coincide with those of your Son: healer of the ill, feeder of the hungry, lover of the outcast, Prince of Peace.”

Then the children of the congregation marched to the front for a reading of the Gettysburg Address.

I choked up. It was the same feeling I had when I visited the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem. Regardless of your personal beliefs, history and emotion run deep here: a patriotism that is not Samuel Johnson’s “last refuge of scoundrels,” the flag-waving bunk that politicians use to incite the masses, or the vengeful “vaporize the the unbelievers” religion that stifles love, humanity and freedom. This is something quite different…something real, something truthful. To a travel writer, this is the epitome of experiencing a sense of place, something much more than a star on a map and plaque on the door.

Bush said that Barney the Dog, who usually chases soccer balls around the White House lawn today took off after the turkey (Did anybody really see this?) The turkey and his understudy got away and are headed for Disneyland, Bush is going to Camp David to dine on one of his (the turkey’s) free-range brothers and the headline below the fold (newspaper talk for the bottom half of the page that doesn’t show on racks) reads:

“3,700 Iraqi Civilians Killed In October”

Tomorrow, I just might be inspired to pray. We have lots to be thankful for, but lots to fix. And I do wish the “healer of the ill, feeder of the hungry, lover of the outcasts, Prince of Peace” got more press than those who use him to win elections.