Turkey Day Festivities

C.S. Lewis once wrote that, "Thanksgiving is the day that we are committing selfishness, about to commit it, or repenting it." At least, that's what the C.S. Lewis quote generating tweet that I follow told me the day of Thanksgiving. At first, I misread the quote replacing 'repenting' with 'representing.' How do I "represent" thanksgiving right now I thought? Well, I'm eating, I'm with family, I'm about to watch football, I'm sending and receiving Happy Thanksgiving texts like a madman. If you really wanna know about, I don't really even like this holiday much. The shopping that has attached itself to it like some kind of parasite, all the consuming of turkeys (which Franklin wanted to be our nation's animal, seriously?) and basically all of it. Turkey isn't that good to me really, if you think about it the best part about turkey is the following day when you get to enjoy turkey sandwiches. Throw some cranberry on there, maybe some mayo...that right there is worth your time. The best items of the day, by far, are green bean casserole (of course my grandmother makes the best) and pumpkin pie (grandma also makes the best). None of this neither here nor there other than to explain my dislike for the day in general. And yes, we do represent this day I guess when we do all the things the holiday is about.
In the quote by C.S. Lewis, the accurate one, he is making an interesting point about being thankful. Repenting selfishness is to be thankful. To forget about yourself and realize what has been given to you brings one to a state of thankfulness. Maybe that is what I miss in this Holiday. Maybe that is what I miss a lot of the time. I'm usually committing or about to commit selfishness in some way or another because I am usually missing the point, focused on such a tiny piece of this world - myself. This year, however, was the first Thanksgiving, sadly, that I think I truly am thankful. This year I represented the word "Thanksgiving" rather than the holiday. I was able to forget myself, step back, and recognize the blessings I have. In doing so I repented from selfishness. A wise man once told me that often times it seems like you are skipping from one stone to the next in life...jumping from one to another in a zig-zag pattern. When we stop and turn around to look back, however; we'll often find a straight path. The more we repent the more we rectify that path, the more direct it becomes. I hope everyone repented from selfishness this Thanksgiving and represented the word instead of the idea.

You Do Not Get To Decide

I was scanning through Donald Miller's blog today, which usually is not as inspirational as one who is a fan of his might assume, but it is interesting and has some fun posts. I don't think he is going for anything life-changing with his blog, nor should he really, but I guess my expectations are set high with this guy. Anyways, on his blog he has a section called Confessions, Observations, and Justifications for writing about yourself (His primary mode of attack in his novels). One of his reasons reads: "I didn’t make myself, I’m not taking credit for my existence, so what’s the difference between talking about myself and talking about somebody else?" Usually I would pass over something like this without a second thought, but it struck me because it is something I think about often. The fact that I did not choose to live. Intrinsically, the fact that I am alive and have what I need to survive provided for me, that the earth works in conjunction with my needs as well as others, is a good basis for any discussion regarding the age-old questions of "where did we come from and why are we here?" Now whether you believe in creation or evolution or a combination of the two, any reasonable person can agree that they did not decide to exist - they simply do. Therefore, whether you believe life came from a creator or from substances colliding (still not sure where those substances came from to begin with), not a single person has ever or will ever give themselves life or provide themselves with existence. With that being said, to call your life your own is simply false. Moreover, it is the root of pride, narcissism, and a whole slue of destructive mindsets. You do not own yourself. Where you came from does. Yes you have the ability to make decisions, to choose a Big Mac over a QuarterPounder w/ Cheese, or what I have dubbed the "Do-Qo-Po-Cho" (Which would be a horrendous decision in my opinion, but to each their own) and of course, other, more significant, life decisions. But the fact remains that you, the truth of where you came from and why you are here, lies outside of yourself. It cannot lie solely within what has been creatED, but rather with the origins of creation. This is not relative, it applies to each person. Donald Miller touches on this in the second half of his reason for writing about himself saying that the difference between writing about yourself and writing about someone else is essentially the same - when you are writing about yourself you are writing about a human, the human condition, the basics of life; all of which are applicable to each individual. The first half of his quote is the focal point, however; "I'm not taking credit for my own existence." Who can? We got here somehow. Life exists somehow. We don't get to make that decision. I do not get to decide how these things happened. None of us get to decide.