Who Holds Tomorrow, Additional Resources
You do not have to live in a world biosphere to know the beauty that is around you. It is standing at your very front door, no matter where that door is. To walk into the sunshine, to gaze out the window at the changing light of the day, offers up the beauty of the universe, if we have hearts open to beatify and willing to see.
This is the heart of the Thanksgiving season – to understand what we have in front of us, and to be grateful for what we have. We live in uncertain times. But this is certain: to be grateful for the beauty of nature, to be appreciate for every single relationship we have right now, right here, to love ourselves and to love God and to love others, this is the fullness of life. And it is offered every day to us, mercifully, with no trace of yesterday upon it. Let us gather in gentleness and surround ourselves with grace, this very hour.
Let all things now living a song of thanksgiving
To God the creator triumphantly raise.
Who fashioned and made us, protected and stayed us,
Who guided us on to the end of our days.
His banners are o'er us, His light goes before us,
A pillar of fire shining forth in the night.
'Till shadows have vanished and darkness is banished
As forward we travel from light into light.
His law he enforces, the stars in their courses
And sun in its orbit obediently shine;
The hills and the mountains, the rivers and fountains,
The deeps of the ocean proclaim him divine.
We too should be voicing our love and rejoicing;
With glad adoration a song let us raise
'Till all things now living unite in thanksgiving:
"To God in the highest, Hosanna and praise!"
“Finally, beloved, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is pleasing, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence and if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things.”
From our wonderful friends at SALT
Excerpt from Autumn Tints, Henry David Thoreau
It is pleasant to walk over the beds
of these fresh, crisp, and rustling leaves.
How beautifully they go to their graves!
How gently lay themselves down
and turn to mould!
Painted of a thousand hues, and fit
to make the beds of us living.
So they troop to their last resting place,
light and frisky. They put on no weeds,
but merrily they go scampering over the earth,
selecting the spot,
choosing a lot,
ordering no iron fence…
How many flutterings
before they rest quietly in their graves!
They that soared so loftily, how contentedly
they return to dust again, and are laid low,
resigned to lie and decay at the foot of the tree,
and afford nourishment to new generations of their kind,
as well as to flutter on high!
They teach us how to die.
