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Freinds,

“We plough the fields and scatter.” Have you noticed where that hymn begins? Not with the harvest, but with working in the soil, before anyone knows what will grow. The seed goes into the ground, and then comes the waiting. We need rain and sun, and neither can be summoned on demand.

I hear a little of St. Francis in that hymn. He looked at the sun, the water, the earth and all her creatures, and called them family: Brother Sun, Sister Water, Brother Fire, Mother Earth. For him, creation was never just the backdrop to our lives, or something set here for our consumption. It was a community of life, given and sustained by God.

And we belong to that community. 

Thanksgiving stirs up all kinds of memories, and gratitude for the things that matter most in our lives: caring for someone, keeping a promise, making a home, trying again, showing up. So much of it is work planted in good soil, with an outcome we can’t see yet. Sometimes we get to gather what has grown. Sometimes we’re still waiting. And sometimes what carries us is simply the help we never knew how to ask for.

Maybe that’s what the hymn invites us to do: to see our own lives in that field. We do our part, and we also depend on each other and on gifts we can’t control. To live in thanksgiving is to remember that we are never only the ones who work and provide. We are also the ones who receive: food from the earth, kindness from a neighbour, patience from someone who loves us, strength for a day we didn’t think we could manage.

None of this is a way of calling everything good. Some seed doesn’t come up. Some losses can’t be made beautiful. What I find so helpful is that the hymn gives thanks without pretending we’re in charge of the harvest. That’s God’s work, not ours. And I’m grateful that our patron, Francis, shows us in such a tangible way how thanksgiving can open our hands: to receive our neighbour, this earth, and those we love as kin, as beloved members of one family. A family that invites us to share the great and immeasurable grace we’ve been given.

To live in this family, in this thanksgiving, is to live Eucharistically. In the bread and wine, we bring what the earth has given and human hands have made, we give thanks, and we share it. It is a shared moment of receiving and giving what we did not have to create, and a reminder that we are loved first, before anything is ever asked of us.

So when we sing our hymn of thankfulness again this year, I hope you’ll hear your own life in it too: not only the harvest, but the turning of the soil, the scattering, the waiting, and the care that carries us through together.

St. Francis shows us that we belong to this creation, and the Eucharist shows us how we belong to one another. That, I think, is what it means to live in thanksgiving.

I can’t wait to give thanks with you this Sunday.

I'll save you a seat.

Alex+