Thanksgiving dawn

Prayer

Whatever happens. Whatever
what is is is what
I want. Only that. But that.

Galway Kinnell

We are, of course, the ghosts, and we will talk of the ghosts before us today, the ones who used to sit there, the ones who used to tell that story.

We are the ghosts who record the world, who fear the loss of life we never quite get, who value words over the world, as it is, for what it is.

We are the ghosts who rattle our way through grocery stores, and glide by in our cars, lit up by the ghostly fluorescence of lamps fueled by burning the remains of life before words.

We are the ghosts who live in a universe that does not exist, of worry and time, of dollars and bonds, of pride and envy and desires only words can conjure.

The world was here long before us, and will still be here long after you are gone, no matter.

***

The natural world, the one we can observe, the one that refuses to acknowledge our skin as boundaries or our brains as special, pushes the ghosts aside.

You will hear folks say they feel "small" when they sit, still, under a canopy of stars of a truly dark sky.

You will hear folks say they feel "tiny" as they sit at the edge of the Atlantic, their senses massaged by the rhythmic rumble of the waves, their noses awakened by its salty edge.

Even a drop of pond water, when observed for more than a moment, reminds us that we are the ghosts surrounded by countless living organisms, doing the same things we do, for the same reasons, and makes us feel small again.

Feeling small feels good.

A tiny bit of something trumps a whole lot of nothing. Tiny is a human conceit.

So while you're thanking those who keep the human ghostly world humming (and I am truly thankful for that), take a moment to thank the millions upon millions of critters in you, on  you, of you. Thank the plankton and the trees and the moss for the oxygen we breathe, the food we eat.

Then laugh out loud, for the universe cares not a hoot if you give thanks or not, it will reward us just for knowing it, or whatever verb we are when we shed our ghosts by the sea or under the stars.

Amen.

We are of this world
and will always be.
Take away the words
and then you will see.

And yes, words from the past, again.