Monday, November 30, 2009

Thanksgiving Notes


Liz, Jacob, and I had a lovely little feast on Wednesday (see Liz's blog or my food blog for details and photos) so that Jacob could be with his family on Thursday. I spent all Tuesday evening and the better part of Wednesday in the kitchen, and was so happy to have the time, money, and motivation to do so. I love, love, love cooking for myself and good friends.

Thursday morning at ten o'clock I attended the annual Thanksgiving Community Concert at the tabernacle. It was a joyful event in a handsome setting. The opening number was a choral arrangement of several phrases from the 55th chapter of Isaiah, the twelfth verse in particular:

For ye shall go out with joy, and be led forth with peace: the mountains and the hills shall break forth before you into singing, and all the trees of the field shall clap their hands.

This struck me quite forcefully because, a few weeks ago, I went on a prayer/meditation walk, culminating in a (tentative) Big Life Decision, which was greeted immediately by a sudden stiff breeze that sent the topmost leaves of a nearby birch tree into a noisy, frantic flapping. It startled me; the sound was so loud, and so unlike anything I'd ever heard out of a tree. I exclaimed to myself, "That tree! It's clapping its hands!" 

(Of course, I was very pleased with the poetic-ness of this idea, and thought myself very clever and original. Now I find out Isaiah was there 3,000 years ahead of me. Ah well.)

After the concert, I went to the Samuelsons' home. Brother Samuelson had invited me for Thanksgiving the previous week. I helped him and his wife with dinner, chatted with his mother, met their kids and grandkids and friend, Paula Soper, who is another professor in the English department, ate a wonderful, noisy meal on a clothed ping-pong table set for fourteen, petted cats, sang songs of praise, and sampled five kinds of pie. They are a beautiful family and it meant a lot to me to spend this holiday with them.

After the main festivities I was invited to stay and watch a Christmas movie. I wanted to, but was tired from three days of Thanksgiving-prep, so I took a rain check and was driven home where I walked into a sparkling clean kitchen -- courtesy of one golden-hearted LizAnne Whittaker. 

I think I was asleep by 8:45. And very cozily, happily, gratefully so. 

Happy Thanksgiving.

36 comments:

A said...

That's so cool that you got to go to Brother Samuelson's!

I love that scripture. My mission president talked about it early in my mission, and it was one of those things that stuck with me throughout the rest of my mission. Even if people rejected us, I'd look up at the trees and think of that scripture.

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