The Last Thanksgiving
History, Time, Space, and Opportunity in the United States and Around The World.
For millions of Americans and people around the world who choose to celebrate Thanksgiving 2020, they were met with resistance from being unable to gather or limited in their gathering or threatened with curfews like here in San Antonio. Let's not prevent Black Friday sales, but Heaven forbid families gather to eat, pray, share, and commune after one of the worst year’s we have seen in the world collectively speaking.
On our Fireplace (we do not use ours) sits one of our favorite paintings, the Angelus.
For us, the Angelus say's it all concerning 2020, Covid, Lockdowns, Government-Corporate Overstepping of Power, Trumpism, Radicalism, and Leftist Wokeness Monster.
My family and I are thankful for the harvest despite the hardships. God knows it could have been far worse for us. This year created new difficulties for my wife and I, but also enormous prosperity as well. One great lacking has been the restrictions to worship. Spiritually, 2020 has drained us. Yet, God still stands true and King over our lives. Our marriage has been stretched under the enormous personal and public stresses life has thrown at us. Family events I cannot mention even. Yet and I mean a lot of yet, yet, and more yet, here we stand. Tired. Concerned. Uncertain. But prospering through the storm.
Marriage is hard. Two imperfect people trying to make a life together and raise little soul's in the mix and you are destined for a lifetime of hardship. We married on September 2014. Now six years later, and still learning how to communicate as a couple, how to be a family, and to envision a lifetime together without fear of the present. Such damn hardship but worth everything; such a sacred institution, marriage and family, that only God could possibly ordain it. No rational person gets married we jest. Looking at divorce rates, decrease in marriage, and a decline in couples having children it is no wonder why the world's rational is a broken one. Lord give us strength.
Amy Coney Barrett saved the year by bringing some cheer with the Courts 5-4 decision by making New York lift their bogus Covid restrictions on Churches, Synagogues, Temples, Mosques… places of Worship. At least for a moment we can see and remember what liberty looks like when actually upheld.
When Biden comes to office he will destroy the Court’s integrity by trying to pack it. Mark. My. Words. Hopefully their attempt will end in failure.
We decided to break from Traditional Turkey and sides (very unconservative of us) to have this scrumptious meal of meals:
Stuffed meatloaf was the star dish. Not a turducken, this bad boy is stuffed with kielbasa, peppers, onion, two different kinds of cheese, and of course a sweet topping. Sides included Mac & Cheese, Mashed Potatoes, Kale Salad, Cranberry salad (aka Pink Stuff), and rolls. Of course pie and for whatever reason we ended up with three pies this year. Pecan being my favorite. Our favorite Sirah, Aristotle:
And our favorite coffee that is locally brewed, What's Brewing Coffee Roasters. You must buy their Early Riser Blend. It is superb.
Last night the wifey and I watched Dolly Parton's Christmas on the Square. A Broadway Musical movie, Netflix did good on this one. Parton is a genius with her music and style. A great cast including the wonderful Christine Baranski, Jenifer Lewis, and Treat Williams. Unsure why it has poor ratings.
Parton has this line in the movie that only she could do:
Grief is love with nowhere to go
Perhaps that sums up 2020. And marriage, friendships, and our country. Hardship eventually produces grief. Then, after more time passes, that grief turns to joy. Nothing well earned comes easy. It takes work. To produce a solid family we have to work at it. A lasting marriage requires pain. And a Nation that we love is worth fighting for against tyranny. Ecclesiastes 3: 1-8 reads,
For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven:
2 a time to be born, and a time to die;
a time to plant, and a time to pluck up what is planted;
3 a time to kill, and a time to heal;
a time to break down, and a time to build up;
4 a time to weep, and a time to laugh;
a time to mourn, and a time to dance;
5 a time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together;
a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing;
6 a time to seek, and a time to lose;
a time to keep, and a time to cast away;
7 a time to tear, and a time to sew;
a time to keep silence, and a time to speak;
8 a time to love, and a time to hate;
a time for war, and a time for peace.
In 1621 we remember the first Thanksgiving of the Plymouth colonists and Wampanoag Native Americans shared an autumn harvest feast. Revisionist will continue to paint that moment of history as a fight between good and evil. How stupid can they be? Like most conflicts, poor communication and agreement on what is important to each party involved are typically how quarrels begin. Painting history in a purely slanted ideological way distorts truth for a false image. Anyways, just like life in 2020, history is marred in conflict.
Sadly, 2020 appears to me to be an end point. A final appearance of the past as we once knew it. Tomorrow we enter a day, a year, a decade, and possibly a century of uncertainty. Mapping our way is only going to be more difficult. Hope now turns into a deeper, darker materialistic promise that radicals especially expect to be met. Did anyone see the nonsense in Scotland?
Scotland becomes world's first country to make pads and tampons free
Presently Conservatives like myself are mocked and ridiculed with our fears over Socialism; “Oh the horrors of free healthcare, housing, tampons…” And let's add to the list universal income and the free food movement. Guys wake up! Free is not real. Hell, Capitalism of the last sixty years is not real, we are living in Disneyland and it's about to foreclose forever. And when these types of promises are made we all eventually suffer for it. Enjoy your free rides and goods and services while you can. But when it is all over and the Piper comes for his dues, remember you paid the price for it. Free is not freedom, rather the cost of free is the end of freedoms as we know it.
At some point in time neither God nor Fate nor Nature can be withheld. The price of abuse humanity has long committed against one another and the earth and against God all comes at a irrefundable price.
Perhaps I will be wrong. To be fair, Thanksgiving will come around in a new normal kind of world of 2021. I mean I don't think the world is ending. But it is changing. And the Thanksgiving of 1621-2020 RIP will never be the same again.
I am just thankful I was able to celebrate it with my family one more time.
God Bless,
EKR