Thanksgiving Thoughts (Blessings of the Invisible)

                Where does your turkey come from? Probably a supermarket, which gets it from a corporate warehouse, which gets it from a jobber or wholesaler, which may or may not actually get it from a farmer. Eventually a farmer is involved. You can even ring out your own groceries, removing even the cashier from the equation. You probably paid for it with a credit card. When you get a bill from the credit card company that isn't even the company from which you bought the turkey, you don't really associate paying the bill with the turkey dinner your purchased. It's just a bill you owe for all the stuff you got - whatever that stuff was. You probably don't grow any of your meal.

                Do you tear apart a loaf of bread to make stuffing, or tear open a box? Some people eat at restaurants or pick up meals restaurants prepare and take them home to eat. They pay, again, with plastic that may even be removed automatically from their bank accounts just as their pay is put into their bank account without their having ever touched a check or money.

                Don't misunderstand me. I'm not a Ludite who thinks we should be forced to get rid of all modern technology and conveniences. I like at least some technology and I love my conveniences. Roughing it to me requires electricity, air conditioning and a wifi connection. What I am noticing, however, is that we are tending to get disconnected from the people and the process. It's hard to be thankful for something that doesn't seem to cost you anything, comes from nowhere and involves almost no effort on your part (or even on the part of someone within the household.)

                Even when and if the family can get together, there are parades, football games, video games and movies. In each, our avatars act and interact on our behalf.  Our own interactions are limited to comments on what the avatar does or does not do. When we get bored with that, we take our plastic but otherwise invisible money to a mall where we buy more stuff that is disconnected from the people involved in its production and transportation, wait in long lines in order to interact (if necessary) with cashiers who didn't get to have a Thanksgiving at home and who have been repeating the same required scripts for ours (or who face the prospect of doing so.) Little to no real interaction takes place that isn't required for the activity before you head home. The alternative for those who wish it is to reject even the shopping activity by giving people checks, involving more movement of invisible money, more disconnectedness in the name of convenience.

           What used to be accomplished by a family now requires hundreds, perhaps thousands, of invisible helpers and the price reflects all those additional hands. All the intermediaries make it even more difficult to be thankful to God for what He has provided. He is even more invisible than the people and processes. This is one of the invisible costs we pay for the benefit of convenience. The connections are easy to forget or ignore. That's why we need Thanksgiving more than ever before. We need it to remind ourselves that we are not the source of all our blessings. That takes conscious effort on our part. Consider the following partial list of people to whom you should give thanks, and for whom you should give thanks:

God, who is the source of all the people and things involved

Farmers                               Manufacturers                    Engineers                            Transportation Drivers

Inventors                            Marketers                            Store Owners                    Store Managers

Sales People                      Jobbers                                 Wholesalers                       Government employees

Inspectors                           Steel mills                            Utility workers                  Stock Clerks

Miners                                  Oil Workers                       Corporate HR Folks            Custodians

Weavers                              Designers                             Bank clerks                         Police

The Military                        Doctors                                 Nurses                               Scientists

Teachers                              Day Care Workers              Garbage Men                    Bus Drivers

Carpenters                         Metal Workers                     Football players                                TV Crews

Stadium Crews                  Celebrities                             Geeks of various sorts     Assembly-line Workers

 

            I've probably left off many of the invisible people who somehow contribute to your Thanksgiving and Black Friday holidays. The list isn't to make you feel guilty. It is meant to make you thoughtful. Perhaps this Thanksgiving you might pay more attention - be more conscious or more present and involved in the people and process, and more grateful to those involved and more grateful for the blessings you've received.