The Gift of Loving Kindness

I was out walking on Chelsea Parade as an overcast Sunday morning decided to become a very unpleasant November afternoon and encountered an acquaintance I haven't seen since, well, since, 2020 sort of crashed and burned back in March (insert the obligatory 'I didn't recognize you because of your mask' joke here).

He remarked that Thanksgiving 'sort of snuck up on me this year,' which makes sense as Thanksgiving means the start of a holiday season for many of us that lasts through the new year, always associated with family, friends, and food.    

This year has been more than a little hard on family and friends and with enhanced (and enforced I hope) COVID-19 protections in place this holiday season which was already on pace to feel like none any of us had ever experienced just became even more insular and isolated. 

We have a Thanksgiving tradition in our house where everyone attending brings something (this year our gathering is very small) and continuing that tradition I'm bringing the paper plates and napkins because no one wants me near where food is prepared. 

Kidding aside, my mission as I wander the grocery store aisles is to answer the annual question about cranberry sauce, jellied or berried. Yeah, another First World Problem I'm left to solve not that I ever do. Talk about not seeing the forest for the trees. While I'm wrestling with what is truly a trivial concern, I'm somehow not seeing those around me who would trade my troubles for theirs in less time than it takes to read this sentence.

This is the time of year when we traditionally celebrate our good fortune, in a vaguely historical homage to the Pilgrim's Progress that we can't quite explain. That's probably because we get it wrong. The First Thanksgiving was really an act of generosity shared by those who had with those who did not.

We, or at least I, think of The Pilgrims when we think about Thanksgiving but it's the Native Americans who sustained them and helped those ill-equipped settlers adapt and overcome whom we should be honoring and emulating.

And that's my point for this year as it has been in past years. I pass by collection points and donation stations every day where assistance for those whom we think of as 'the less fortunate' is being assembled and organized. The people who need our help are not 'less fortunate'-they are our neighbors and in many instances family and friends.

These are brutally hard times for more of us than at any point at least in my lifetime and if you thought the response to COVID-19 was making things rough for you, try being a family that didn't have very much to start with when the stuff hit the rotating fan blades.

This time of year, and more so now than ever, agencies and organizations that work with those in need are being overwhelmed by requests for help.

Ask St. Vincent de Paul Place about how many (more) hot meals they're preparing not just for the holidays but every day and how many new food pantry customers they have. More importantly between now and next Thursday, ask how you can help with food and/or cash donations so that they, in turn, can help even more people. 

The pandemic and its response have changed how we conduct food drives and warm coat collections but that doesn't mean the need has disappeared and while this team of year the Connecticut Food Bank receives its greatest number of donations (I asked), we cannot allow hunger to be a holiday tradition for some families because it’s not and it shouldn't be.

Family, friends, and food. May we never have enough of them especially as we finalize our preparations for Thanksgiving. If you have the good fortune of being able to share some of what you have then both you and your recipients will be blessed which may be the greatest lesson of this most historical of all of our holidays.

-bill kenny