The first Thanksgiving celebration is traditionally held in 1621 in Plymouth, Massachusetts, but it took place shortly after the Great Disaster. The Pilgrims arrived in November 1620, too late to plant crops, and were completely unprepared for the harsh New England winters. About half died from disease, malnutrition, and exposure.

Their survival depended on the Wampanoag tribe. Squanto taught them to grow corn and fish. Samoset was the first to make contact. Chief Massasoit then concluded a peace treaty. The Harvest Festival of 1621 celebrated survival against terrible odds and felt a moment of relief and gratitude after profound loss.

This context is often overlooked in simplistic Thanksgiving stories. This moment is made all the more poignant and complex given the subsequent tragic history between European settlers and Native Americans.

This is the scene of thanksgiving in the Bible. Although the Book of Lamentations mourns the destruction of Jerusalem, it offers the famous line: “The steadfast love of the Lord never fails. His mercies never end. They are renewed every morning. Great is your faithfulness.” In despair lies the promise of rescue.

As I read the Bible, I’m always reminded that we often project our own hopes and promises, right and wrong, onto God. And we wonder why God would reject such an action. our rule.

In religion there is a deep urge to mold the world into something bearable, to imagine a God to fit that world, and to bow down before that creation. The Bible does not cooperate. We continue to refuse to tame God.

Nothing that comes out of the Bible is a way to stay close to God’s presence. It’s a long, slow education in letting go. Revelation is real, but it never happens on demand. God appears and disappears in powerful and unexpected ways. Over and over again.

Divine nearness is kindled in the burning bush, temple glory, visions, and healing. But every time people try to confine that being to a place or institution such as a tent, temple, law, or king, it slips out. The ark is captured. The temple burns. Prophets thrive through destruction.

The Bible provides us with ordinances, doctrines, and covenants, but it teaches us that these are by no means all there is to it. “The Most High does not dwell in houses made with hands” (Acts 7:48). Even the most sacred things become obstacles when we mistake them for existence itself.

The golden calf moment captures this perfectly. The people who have just come out of slavery become restless while Moses is climbing the mountain. There they melt gold and make the shape of a calf. They are not worshiping another god, they are trying to find the real god. They want something they can carry, see, and manage. And they are rebuked not because they are not religious, but because they are trying to make God graspable.

In a later story, Naaman the Syrian, a foreign military commander who seeks healing from the prophet Elisha, expects a vision. Instead, you will be asked to wash in a regular river. He almost walks away. But healing comes not in the show he had hoped for, but in disappointment.

That pattern runs throughout the Gospels. Jesus speaks in riddles, slips through crowds, and overturns authorities. He said the Spirit moves like the wind, meaning it is unpredictable and uncontrollable. He teaches how to live in a lack that is poor in spirit, cautious, merciful and prone to interruption.

There is something oddly comforting about this. Maybe it will be released.

Religious certainties can quickly go sideways. When we think God is boxing us in, we become defensive, stubborn, and cruel. The belief that we have discovered the truth often licenses violence.

Jacques Derrida (Yes, that Derrida might call this theological non-closure, the refusal to allow meaning or God to be determined. It’s not a denial of truth. It is a resistance to idolizing our own grasp.

But if God is free and unfixed, we are forced into a different attitude. There will be less clutch. Received more. Although we tend to forget the wisdom of the past, we still associate gratitude with thoughtfulness and remembrance. “Gratitude” and “thinking” have the same root.

When prayer feels dry, when institutions fail, when God seems absent, this pattern in the Bible reminds us that absence is not just failure. It’s part of the road.

The Bible expects God to come and go. Clarity is not promised. We are promised that those who have escaped from our hands still seek our benefit.

If your hands are full, you will not be able to receive the gift. Hands freed by absence are acceptable. Ironically, the survival of the Pilgrims, whom we celebrate as the first Thanksgiving, depended on the help of the very people who would later lose their land and lives.

Even more ironically, Native American traditions may best represent the wisdom the Pilgrims needed. The Haudenosaunee “Thanksgiving Address” expresses gratitude for each element of creation, not in spite of suffering, but in recognition that life and death, presence and absence are inseparable parts of the same reality.
Etho niyohtónha’k ne onkwa’nikón:ra (“Now our hearts are one.”)

notes and reading

haudenosaunee thanksgiving greetings

bible verse

• Acts 7:48 NRSV. in Indigenous Version: Indigenous Translation of the New Testamentt: “He who is greater than us does not live in a hut built by human hands.”

• Exodus 32:1–35, episode of the golden calf on Mount Sinai.

• 2 Kings 5:1–14, Naaman’s healing story.

The Elusive: Towards a New Biblical Theology—Samuel Therian (1978). Therian was an influential Biblical scholar who taught at Union Theological Seminary in New York for 35 years.

the silence of jesus―James Breach (1983). Mr. Breech was a professor of Biblical studies at York University in Toronto, Canada. “As T.S. Eliot observed, “Man cannot bear much reality.” The Spirit of Jesus Passion for authenticity. ”

Derrida and negative theologyed. Harold Coward and Toby Foshay (1992), especially How to Avoid Talking: Denial. Jacques Derrida’s concept is difference-The permanent deferral of final meaning is similar to the rejection of apophatic theology, which refuses to fix God within human categories.

• Wampanoag tribe—For the Wampanoag people, Thanksgiving is very complicated. Their ancestors held four harvest festivals throughout the year to give thanks for the earth, the seasons, and its bounty. But the modern holiday also serves as a painful reminder of the colonization that followed the encounter with the Pilgrims in 1621. Many Wampanoag people observe this, as do other Native Americans.ve Thanksgiving is a day to remember their entire history, tragedy and resilience. (For more background on the Wampanoag way of thinking about Thanksgiving, see Native Americans Share Long-Ignored Thanksgiving Truths.) Al JazeeraNovember 25, 2021. )

democratic ritual

What Nietzsche got right

Approximately 2+2=5

Source: 2 + 2 = 5 – williamgreen.substack.com