We all win some and lose some. We have grievances and reasons to be grateful. It makes us great. Thanksgiving is coming up, and it gives us all a chance to put off the workaday dress we wear, and put on gratitude. People who usually get along okay apart from one another all see each other across a table again, and petty resentments and old patterns of unease take their toll.
Nobody looks at the excessive food and thinks how far they are from starving.
Nobody feels the warmth of his or her chair and considers how nice it is to have central heating. It is hard to have a feast in an affluent society, and hard deliberately to remind oneself of how much one has been given in a culture in which wealth is seen as earned and poverty as deserved. This is how the survivors of Plimouth Plantation saw themselves. Rev. Scott opened the meeting with a meaningful prayer. The treasurer, Mike Wilson, reported that all exchanges with Merrill Lynch for the year have been completed.