Thursday Mezze: Pour Out Our Hearts in ThanksgivingMezze - المزة - a wide selection of small dishes served as appetizers, including such delicacies as hummus, cheese, eggplant, brains, stuffed grape leaves, calamari, and much more
Several years ago I attended a concert at Tufts University performed by vocalist and anthropologist Galeet Dardashti, who presented a program entitled Monajat (Fervent Prayer), inspired by a poem by 11th-century Sufi poet Abdullah Ansari. I was transfixed, as though bathed in light. Dardashti, who is Jewish and whose family lived for generations in Iran (her grandfather, Yona, was a famous cantor and singer of classical Persian music), blended Ansari’s poem into traditional Persian songs and liturgy for Selihot - Jewish penitential poems and prayers. “O Lord, give me a heart,” Ansari wrote, “I can pour out in thanksgiving. Give me life so I can spend it working for the salvation of the world.” As I listened, as I watched an Israeli performing with Iraqi-American and Palestinian backup, as I reflected on the familial interweaving of Farsi, Hebrew, Arabic and English that transfixed her audience, I was moved to tears, reminded not only of the beauty and richness of lands I’ve traveled but of the love of fellow sojourners who have come across my lifetime to help form whom I am today. For so much love - from so many hearts and minds - I am so thankful. From so many rivers to so many seas, I am ever so thankful. Working for the salvation of the world - I have come to fully understand - starts with hospitality, starts by embracing our neighbors, by embracing the Other, by sharing the bounty and abundance in which we live while recognizing the scarcity, amidst the abundance, in so many other lives. It’s November. Nights grow longer still, days colder and grayer, and for many what should be the beginning of a season of prayer, pleasure, and plenty has become a time of need, anxiety, and fear. Last week, at a small gathering in New Hampshire, friends and colleagues took turns exchanging thoughts about we were thankful for, about gratitude and blessings for loved ones and family. As
I joined in the sharing I felt tentative, wanting to look forward to
the season with joy, burdened by so much loss and conflict over the past
couple of years. Bear with me - my people work at Home Depot. For those able to live in privilege in America it’s the season of Thanksgiving, Black Friday, Advent, Hanukkah, Christmas, Kwanza, New Year. While many welcome supermarket fliers touting Thanksgiving food specials too many others are less joyous - for the disenfranchised, delegitimized, and exploited too many Fridays are already black. For them it’s a season of worry, hunger, cold and guilt that they can’t fully provide for their families - a season of fear that electricity might be turned off, cars repossessed, loved ones snatched from the streets and disappeared. We must not forget them. We mustn’t forget those who fear November. When President Abraham Lincoln proclaimed Thanksgiving a national holiday it was believed that the individual most responsible for influencing him was an ardent abolitionist and New Hampshire native, Sarah Josepha Buell Hale, editor of Godey’s Lady’s Book. After an inspired - what some might call obsessive - letter writing campaign that spanned five American presidents, Hale, in a letter penned Sept. 28, 1863, found a receptive ear at the White House. On Oct. 3, 1863, Lincoln issued a Proclamation of Thanksgiving that referred to “... The lamentable civil strife in which we are unavoidably engaged ...” Today, sadly, I believe, we struggle still to overcome Lincoln’s “lamentable civil strife.” Today’s strife may not be on Civil War battlefields far from our New England comforts, but it is present, it is persistent and it is pernicious - and remains an existential threat to our very survival as a nation where sovereignty resides in the people, not with oligarchs and kakistocrats. While we have much to be thankful for, it is unjust that today’s ongoing civil strife revolves around issues that America should’ve resolved generations ago. Today, 162 years after Lincoln’s proclomation, racial divisions, social injustices, wealth inequality, immigration rights, religious discrimination and battles over housing, education, universal health care and LGBTQIA+ rights tear us apart still. Lincoln’s call for a time of Thanksgiving came during the Civil War’s darkest days, when America and its families were being ripped asunder, when fathers were pitted against sons. when bodies were stacked upon bodies like cordwood. Indeed, when the very idea of one nation was being challenged by secessionists, Lincoln responded, in a prayerful way, issuing his call in response to the “lamentable civil strife in which we are unavoidably engaged.” Today, we’re still unavoidably engaged. Our days are dark still. We must resist. We must believe, as Leonard Cohen tell us, that “There is a crack in everything. That’s how the light gets in.” We need to find that crack. Let us start by pouring out in thanksgiving prayers for our neighbors, those seen and unseen — for they who will come to illuminate our lives with beauty, renewal and love, for they who are struggling to feed and shelter not just their families but the orphans, the weak, the vulnerable all while struggling to liberate themselves from occupation, oppression, and exploitation, both domestically and abroad. That’s how the light gets in. Each day - not just today - let us pour out in thanksgiving prayers for the vulnerable and the disenfranchised, for those struggling for dignity, respect and freedom. Each day - not just today - let us pour out in thanksgiving prayers that someday the “lamentable civil strife” will have been fully engaged and overcome. That’s how the light gets in. Draw your Kaffiyeh close - there are many challenges ahead. Salamaat, |