I sit here on Thanksgiving morning with the blinds up looking out on this dreary Thursday morning. I’m sure the sun is shining in other parts of the country, but here in southern Illinois, the clouds reign queen for the moment. It’s as if the heavens are setting the stage for my mood today, giving me the perfect combination of cool and cloudy, maybe with a little bit of rain. I love days like this. There’s something about the melancholy that arrives within me that I embrace, allowing me to see the beauty of the grass that’s still a deep rich green, only enhanced by the contrast of gray skies. The deep burgundy of leaves desperately clinging to trees matched with the leaves that have already let go, admitted their time has come to an end and fallen to the ground. There’s a poetry that floats through the air, filling up my lungs and making me tear up from the beauty of life, of the way things die and come back to life every single year. It’s a profound truth that too often escapes me: that death usually begets life.
How fitting that the day we’re supposed to remember as a day of thankfulness for the somewhat mythical story about the Pilgrims and Native Americans sharing a pleasant meal together is a day that is dripping with melancholy. This dreariness reminds us that the myths we have built our nation upon have incurred great sadness and incredible loss to Native peoples. Today I feel what I can of the weight of Native American peoples, especially The Standing Rock tribe in the Dakotas who are protesting the Dakota Access Pipeline, also known as DAPL, because it is digging up and bulldozing its way through sacred sites of the tribe in the name of American enterprise and independence from East Asian oil. This is not a new thing, the oppression of Native American people, the bulldozing of their lands for the exploitation of the earth and its resources. We in the U.S., along with our President-elect, have a long history of treating the earth like we treat our women, with disrespect and degradation, taking what we want without permission and blaming it when it doesn’t behave accordingly.
Native peoples constantly remind us that the earth is not ours to take, not ours to pillage and exploit. The earth is our mother, our gift, our guidance; She is the one who will show us the way when we cannot find our way anymore. So, I’m taking this Thanksgiving morning to remember the sorrow, to sit for a while in the deep sadness we white folks have been a part of creating for quite some time now and to repent. As the clouds keep in the sky today, so too may I keep Native peoples and the earth in my sight as I sit around the table eating food from the earth and enjoying good company. May I not lose site of the grief we have caused in pursuit of a comfortable life and may I be changed by that grief, called into action. I pray that we as a nation can learn how to embrace the very people we stole life from in this land. Native Americans usually don’t say they own the land, but they do say that it is sacred and holy. And we are destroying the land like we’ve destroyed Native Americans through centuries.
As I give thanks today, I also beg God’s mercy on us, on our country that continues to take what isn’t ours to take, screaming at the world we’re doing it for Democracy, for the greater good, for Christianity, for God. I beg God’s grace and pardon upon us white folk as we learn to navigate our privilege, as we unlearn the myths we’ve so desperately built our history upon. I beg God’s deep and abiding love to heal the wounds we have caused, that we can learn to rectify our wrongs, and that we can learn from history so that we don’t repeat our mistakes. I pray that we can learn how to live in peace, lifting one another up, celebrating our differences. May we learn that being ‘colorblind’ is simply perpetuating racism and the oppression of people who are not white. May we learn to see our differences and celebrate them, not sweep them under the rug. I pray for the people of our nation to learn that greatness is not about taking what we want without permission, but that greatness is built upon kindness, gentleness, empathy, humility, and most of all, love. May we learn that love is the best kind of greatness we can be, that love is always the best answer, the right answer, the best virtue we can aspire to be as a nation. Today I will give thanks for love, for a Love that wins, that perseveres, that lasts through water cannons and tear gas and rubber bullets. I will give thanks for a Love so fierce for this earth and its inhabitants that it will put its own life at risk to stand up to an empire that only cares about exploitation for the sake of wealth and power.
Timothy Burge-Lape 