Thanks-grieving Day

Conquest, brutality, and genocide are a part of my pre-history as a white American man. The stories of my people’s history that I inherited, are full of half-truths, fabrications, and assumptions of divine mandate. I am ashamed of the evils my nation has perpetrated, and continue to perpetrate against Native Americans. I am also ashamed that it has taken me a full 36 years of my life to finally take the time to listen and learn the history of Native American people FROM Native American sources.

If you are, like me, a non-native person, take some time today or tomorrow to write down all you think you know about Native American history. Write down what you think you know. Also, write down any assumptions you have about Native Americans. I will share some of my own, though I am not proud of them:

This Blessed Moment

Time gets all weird on you when you age. The past seems so recent, the present moves by too swiftly, and the future holds a chilling conclusion. As a child I remembered how ANCIENT something was if it was only a few years old, or how one month felt like a year, and a year was a thousand lifetimes.

Our five-year-old son, Oliver, has begun playing with the idea of time. He tries to imagine what he played with and how he talked when he was three. He speaks as if it was decades ago, “way back when I was three, or even earlier way way back when I was a baby.” He has no idea how to guess the age of someone older than ten. I was sixty-something the first time he guessed. He now knows the correct age. And repeats it often. Too often.

The phrase, “now is all we have,” didn’t make sense to me when I was younger. I felt infinite and immortal. “Now” meant forever. My feelings were huge. So was my ego.

As my body aches and male pattern baldness switches on, I am much more diminished. Thank God.

The here and now is painfully real to me. It makes me notice things about my surroundings. And it helps me give thanks. Even if it’s to no one or thing in particular. I say thanks.

Thank you for giving me consciousness to be aware of this moment. Thank you for blooming tomatoes. Thank you for love. Thank you for Taika Waititi. Thank you for making me a silly sack of emotions.

I give thanks that I live at a time when I can publish these silly thoughts with the push of a button; and, perhaps a stranger will read something true in my words. Even though it sounds absurd and illogical, I say thanks.

Because, if not now, when?