Last Thanksgiving I reprinted Joan Beck’s last Thanksgiving column. As I mentioned then, for years, Mrs. Beck, a columnist for the Chicago Tribune, wrote a special Thanksgiving Day column. Her column was always a highlight of my Thanksgiving, and I looked forward to reading it every year.
I decided to post another of her Thanksgiving columns this year. This one is from the Chicago Tribune of November 23, 1989, two weeks after the wall of the Berlin Wall:
“As we gather together to count the Lord’s blessings, 368 years after the first Thanksgiving Day, we are grateful, O God, for perestroika if it works and glasnost if it’s real, for the liberating breaches in the Berlin Wall and the integrated beaches in South Africa, for summits and summers and sunrises and symphonies and for the innate yearning to be free that no regime can trample forever.
For the Cold War’s apparent end and freedom’s peaceful triumph, we thank Thee, O God our help in ages past, our hope for years to come. And for borders that are no longer barriers and border guards who no longer shoot, for families reunited and liberated people dancing joyfully through forbidden checkpoints, we offer praise this happy day.
O Lord our God, when we in awesome wonder consider all the world Thy hands have made, we give Thee thanks today for a world beginning to shake free from the long, cold curse of communism, for the hope of arms reductions and the prospects of new prosperity, for the Common Market and common stock and common sense and common causes, for laws and legislatures and Lech Walesa and for the Afghans who wouldn’t give up and whose courage exposed the fatal weaknesses in the evil empire.
Eternal Father, strong to save, whose arm hath bound the restless wave, we count as blessings infertility treatments when they succeed and anesthesia when it’s necessary, Mommy tracks and Daddy tracks, Jefferson, jelly beans, jeeps and jets. Thank you, too, for 27 m.p.g. and 8.55 percent ARM, for 120/80 and 20-20 and 98.6, for a $4.15 trillion GNP and any time the Dow stays over 2700, and for IRAs and ESOPs and 401-Ks, for CDs and MDs and TDs, for MRIs and AZT, for PBS and DNA and TGIF.
For basil and bassoons and bassos profundo, for baseball and bathrobes and batteries included, we are grateful, Our Father who art in heaven. So, too, for drug rehabilitation clinics when they help and school-based management when it’s effective, for smokers who quit and kids who just say no, for lithium and Lincoln, Little League and ‘The Little Mermaid,’ for modems and mocha and marathons, for mothers and brothers and significant others.
God who moves in a mysterious way Thy wonders to perform, we are full of praise for green thumbs and green peppers and green revolution and the greening of Yellowstone National Park, for grandchildren and grand juries and grand opera and granola, for good cholesterol, good vibes, Good Samaritans and good times, for home cooking, homecomings, homemakers, home runs, homilies, and honey.
For letters that say, ‘You’re admitted to the class of 1994’ and ‘You’re covered’ and ‘You’re hired,’ we are grateful, God of grace and God of glory. So, too, for ‘When in the course of human events’ and ‘Government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth’ and ‘Yea though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death I will fear no evil’ and ‘It’s benign’ and ‘Your baby’s just perfect’ and ‘For better or for worse, for richer or for poor, in sickness and in health’ and ‘We shall overcome’ and ‘They all lived happily ever after.’
Immortal, invisible, God only wise, thank you for immunizations and immigration and imagination, for leprechauns and leotards and legends and leisure, for fathers and grandfathers and forefathers and founding fathers and father figures, for cats and catfish and CT scans, for catalogues and cathedrals and catamarans. For recycled trash and reclaimed wastelands, for emission controls and no-smoking areas, we are grateful, Lord, and for dolls and dolphins and dogs and doggerel, for Saturdays and sundaes and chocolate and Chopin.
For daughters and daydreams and databanks and dates, for sons and soup and songs and soul, we give Thee thanks, God of the earth, the sky, the sea. And for Jessica and Roseanne, for heroes and herons and hymns, for insulin and insurance and instant replays, for veterans and veterinarians and veggies, for holidays and holy days and honeymoons and holly.
God who is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble, we are grateful for poetry and polyester and poinsettias and promises of everlasting life, for polenta and polka and politics, for polliwogs and polypeptides and pompons, for paramedics and parachutes and parades and paradise. Thank you as well for sales and sails and scholarships, for books and booms and boondocks, for ‘No cavities’ and no-calorie and no cholesterol and Noel.
Our Fathers’ God to thee, author of liberty, we raise our Thanksgiving praise for healing after hurt, for dawn after dark, for rest after work and for life after life, for a bridge over trouble and a port in the storm, for answered prayers and for love that will not let us go, for peace and Peace Corps and peacocks and paydays, and evermore that ‘neither death nor life nor angels nor principalities nor powers nor things present, nor things to come nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature shall be able to separate us from the love of God.’”
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Note (11/25/10 7:30 am): The Chicago Tribune reprinted Joan Beck’s last Thanksgiving column, from November 26, 1998, in today’s paper. This is the column I posted last Thanksgiving. I am very pleased they printed it. A whole new generation of readers will get to enjoy it, and many other readers will get to enjoy it again.
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