Happy Thanksgiving!
With all the travel, traditions, family, friends, and complex history, I know that this is a challenging holiday for some, a place of deep comfort for others, and both challenge and comfort for many others.
Still worth celebrating, and potential for healing. Chance to remember past, lift up the rare moment of unity between Europeans and Native Americans in what was otherwise a tragic encounter. This holiday is also a chance for us to celebrate the land and the harvest, and it is also a chance for us to engage in the original Thanksgiving tradition, which was to use this day as an opportunity to ask for forgiveness for the harms we have done and be grateful for the opportunity to do so. I made a whole video, essay, and podcast earlier this week about all.
During my research for that essay, I found the Thanksgiving Proclamation by Abraham Lincoln in 1863, right in the middle of the Civil War. The Thanksgiving holiday was created based on the hard work of a woman named Sarah Hale, and she hoped this would be a holiday that could unite all of us Americans around one holiday.
The Thanksgiving Proclamation was part of the presidential decree, and I find it to be remarkably relevant still, 160 years later. So, I have prepared an adapted version to share with you today. I've made it slightly more secular.
You can read, watch, or listen to my proclamation.
A Thanksgiving Proclamation for 2022
By Duncan Autrey
Inspired by Lincoln's 1863 Thanksgiving Proclamation (below & here)
The year that is drawing towards its close, has been filled with the blessings of fruitful fields and healthful skies.
To these bounties, which are so constantly enjoyed that we are prone to forget the source from which they come, others have been added. We experience abundance which is of so extraordinary a nature, that it cannot fail to penetrate and soften even the heart which is habitually insensible to these blessings.
In the midst of a pandemic of unequalled magnitude, severe political division and strife, and recurring reminders of our unhealed national wounds, our nation and society continue to function, and we continue to experience the highest quality of life in history.
Despite our divisions and differences, our systems and society continue to find a functional balance between order and freedom. And we continue in our struggle to find the balance between justice and mercy.
Despite living in times of grievance, there are still opportunities for gratitude.
Despite all the pain, harm, and trauma that has been experienced and caused by ourselves, by our ancestors and by our nation, we are still here and share in our yearning for healing, repair, and redemption.
Our ongoing opportunity to heal and forgive and be forgiven, is a gift beyond human counsel. These great things are beyond the power of mortal hands.
So...
It has seemed to me fit and proper that all these blessings should be solemnly, reverently and gratefully acknowledged as with one heart and one voice by the whole American People.
I do therefore invite my fellow citizens in every part of the United States. set apart and observe the last Thursday of November to offer thanksgiving and praise to the Earth, to life, to the universe, to God, Goddess and whatever higher power it is that you need to offer gratitude to
I invite us to honor the land that we stand upon. May we remember those who came before us, our ancestors who struggled to build this world for us and those who tended to this land for millennia before it was taken from them without consent. May we honor all those who accompany us on this journey today, and may we hold in our hearts and consideration all those who are still to come,
I recommend that as we offer gratitude for all our deliverances and blessings, we do so with humility for our national perverseness and disobedience
May we ask for help in caring for all the widows, widowers, orphans, and mourners who hold the memory of those we have lost.
May we seek and offer support in caring for all sufferers in the lamentable political, social and civil strife in which we are unfortunately engaged, and…
May We fervently seek the forgiveness, strength, and grace that we need to heal the wounds of the nation and to restore and transform our national and human experiment into one that supports the full enjoyment of peace, harmony, tranquility, and union for all.
Amen, Ashé, Aho, and May it be so.
Thank you for being on this journey with me as we co-create our future.
I hope you have a wonderful Thanksgiving.
For reference, here is the original Thanksgiving Proclamation by Abraham Lincoln:
Washington, D.C.
October 3, 1863By the President of the United States of America.
A Proclamation.
The year that is drawing towards its close, has been filled with the blessings of fruitful fields and healthful skies. To these bounties, which are so constantly enjoyed that we are prone to forget the source from which they come, others have been added, which are of so extraordinary a nature, that they cannot fail to penetrate and soften even the heart which is habitually insensible to the ever watchful providence of Almighty God. In the midst of a civil war of unequalled magnitude and severity, which has sometimes seemed to foreign States to invite and to provoke their aggression, peace has been preserved with all nations, order has been maintained, the laws have been respected and obeyed, and harmony has prevailed everywhere except in the theatre of military conflict; while that theatre has been greatly contracted by the advancing armies and navies of the Union. Needful diversions of wealth and of strength from the fields of peaceful industry to the national defence, have not arrested the plough, the shuttle or the ship; the axe has enlarged the borders of our settlements, and the mines, as well of iron and coal as of the precious metals, have yielded even more abundantly than heretofore. Population has steadily increased, notwithstanding the waste that has been made in the camp, the siege and the battle-field; and the country, rejoicing in the consciousness of augmented strength and vigor, is permitted to expect continuance of years with large increase of freedom. No human counsel hath devised nor hath any mortal hand worked out these great things. They are the gracious gifts of the Most High God, who, while dealing with us in anger for our sins, hath nevertheless remembered mercy. It has seemed to me fit and proper that they should be solemnly, reverently and gratefully acknowledged as with one heart and one voice by the whole American People. I do therefore invite my fellow citizens in every part of the United States, and also those who are at sea and those who are sojourning in foreign lands, to set apart and observe the last Thursday of November next, as a day of Thanksgiving and Praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the Heavens. And I recommend to them that while offering up the ascriptions justly due to Him for such singular deliverances and blessings, they do also, with humble penitence for our national perverseness and disobedience, commend to His tender care all those who have become widows, orphans, mourners or sufferers in the lamentable civil strife in which we are unavoidably engaged, and fervently implore the interposition of the Almighty Hand to heal the wounds of the nation and to restore it as soon as may be consistent with the Divine purposes to the full enjoyment of peace, harmony, tranquillity and Union.
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