Counting and Appreciating Our Blessings

It didn't start out that way but this is proving to be not a year to get everything we ever wanted but rather to better appreciate everything we have. And on this, the eve of Thanksgiving in a year of pandemic, it's tempting to be sad or angry about how much we're missing instead of being grateful for our family, friends, and ourselves. Maybe this will help.

Let me retell a story that’s older than our country. Variations of it have been experienced by many who've arrived on our shores since our earliest days. Sometimes we forget that we are at our best as a nation when we realize we are a diverse people with shared circumstances.

Here's our story: The travelers were very poor and had come a long way with very little money and less hope. The lives they led had been so desperate that arriving uninvited in a nation that had no use for them had seemed not only attractive but really their only choice.

The first months were terribly hard. The immigrants didn't know the customs, couldn't understand or speak the language, had little grasp of the nature of the place they had come to live in, and even less desire to learn of it. Arriving in the middle of the winter, totally unprepared for the season's savagery by their experiences in their own country, nearly half were dead by the Spring.

Their hosts in this new world had difficulties with the settlers. Their customs, their language, their religion were all so different from what they had known; it was hard to see a way to develop any sense of attempted community. On more than occasion, as it had turned out, befriending the new people had proven to be unwise as more and more of their sort just kept showing up and crowding out those who had lived in the area for so many decades.

The emigres were in a precarious predicament. It had taken almost all of their savings to make the trip to what they hoped would be a fresh start. They believed or wanted to, that if they worked hard and did well, one day they could send for family and friends to join them in their brave adventure. 

But every day was a challenge and more often than not, often without a victory. They were isolated, decimated, and left to their own devices. It took extraordinary hospitality and courageous kindness by one of the long-time residents of the established community to extend a helping hand and organize support so that as the following fall approached the new people had reasons to believe.

How fortunate there wasn't any strict security at coastal ports of entry, or any security of any kind actually. Fortunate for us, who followed in their footsteps that is. We, the direct and indirect descendants of those first arrivals five hundred years ago on Plymouth Rock, Massachusetts, will tomorrow celebrate Thanksgiving, only because Samoset ignored the arguments and fears of so many of his fellow Abenaki and welcomed the Pilgrims to the New World, establishing even before we were a nation, our national legacy of welcoming all to our shores. 

Happy Thanksgiving.

-bill kenny