Thank a Lot

“Just shut up and be thankful for what you’ve got!” Have you heard that one before? Have you said that one before? It reminds me of a fairly common scene in films where a father’s ability to provide for his family is under intense scrutiny; real or imagined. Reaching a breaking point, he viciously snaps at his child, whose innocent comment came down with the weight of the proverbial straw . . .

When I was teaching, one of the few hard and fast rules in my classroom involved a definite restriction of freedom of speech. My students were not allowed to tell anyone to “shut up” until they heard me say it. In the fifteen years of my career, I never told anyone to “Shut up!” (now please be quiet; the movie’s about to start)

A movie I’ve always enjoyed is The Never Ending Story. And the sequel, cleverly titled Never Ending Story II, drove me to my knees with a flood of emotion - and an urge to stand and scream “Shut up! This is so stupid!” (fortunately, for obvious reasons, this was not a film I showed in my classroom). In the original film, the land and inhabitants of Fantasia are on the verge of becoming extinct, due to “an approaching void known as the Nothing.” A void that thrived on a growing lack of imagination, which was the sad result of fewer and fewer actively engaged readers across the world - like that would ever happen. Did I mention this film is a fantasy? (Fantasia?)

Sadly, many of our “real world” holiday traditions have been swallowed up by our own version of The Nothing: the EVERYTHING! “Of course I’m thankful, but I don’t have time to sit back, relax and reflect because . . . well, just look at EVERYTHING that has to be done. It’s Black Friday tomorrow - again (kind of like “third breakfast”) and my revised Christmas list needs revising and . . . (cue the theme song for The Never Ending Story)

Something I love about a day set aside to give thanks is that to do it properly, it has to come from the heart. It’s not a day for making requests but one for giving thanks, indicated by it’s own cleverly concocted title - Thanksgiving! And where does it head from our thankful hearts?

“Praise God from Whom all blessings flow.”

“It is a good thing to give thanks unto the Lord . . .” (Psalm 92:1)

So if you’re finding that The EVERYTHING is making a busy, ungrateful mess of your day for giving thanks, “Just shut up and be thankful for what you’ve got!” Or, in a more *classroom appropriate manner - “. . . the Lord is in his holy temple; let all the earth keep silence before him.” (Habakkuk 2:20)

Happy Thanksgiving!

*perhaps “classroom appropriate” scripture reading has already been swallowed by The Nothing