Our Thanksgiving holiday tradition invites to our table not just family and friends but those we might not ordinarily welcome — a neighbor recently widowed, a newly arrived immigrant, a college student far from home. Thanksgiving calls us to a greater inclusiveness, to sharing the bounty and diversity among us.
In a time of civil war and great division, and shortly after signing the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863, Abraham Lincoln called for a national holiday to invoke a spirit of harmony, a vision of unity which is summed up in the motto, e pluribus unum: out of many, one.
A great African American spiritual which arose from the days of brutal slavery in this country declares: “I’m gonna sit at the welcome table one of these days.” It is echoed in Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech in which he imagined “the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.” Dr. King was drawing upon an ancient and universal vision of reconciliation which we occasionally see played out on the world stage — as in South Africa dismantling apartheid, or the reunification of Germany after the Cold War.
One memorable Thanksgiving, I was invited with other family members to share a meal at my uncle’s home in New Jersey. Years before, my aunt and uncle had hired a Black woman named Lucille to serve as their maid not only to cook and clean but to look after their children when they were younger.
They would often say she had become “part of the family.” It thus seemed natural to me, when Lucille had prepared the Thanksgiving meal and we had gathered at the table, to invite her in to join us. But at this, my uncle instantly held up his hand and said no. He had been brought up in the days of segregation in his native Oklahoma. Lucille was forbidden to sit down at his table. The pain of injustice and exclusion I was feeling, as Lucille surely had felt it over many years, made it clear a higher law had been violated precisely when it could have been honored.
Foundational to all the Abrahamic religions — Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Baha’i and others – is the belief that, while we are many different peoples, we find our common humanity as children of one Creator. The origins of Israel go back to the apiru, a mixed multitude of fugitive slaves, Egyptians and other “troublemakers” who sought freedom in their flight from Egypt. What brought them together was not some ideal of racial or ethnic purity but a covenant first articulated by Moses as a people who welcomed the stranger. That spirit of freedom and inclusion is commemorated in the Jewish Passover Seder as it was in the Passover supper Jesus celebrated on the eve of his death. Likewise, Islamic and Baha’i faiths bring together people from all countries and all races to a shared community.
At the same time we hail the welcoming spirit of Thanksgiving, often recounting a story of pilgrim and indigenous sitting down together in friendship, we are aware of the shadow of conquest, slavery and genocide which transpired in this land and which to this day haunts our national ethos. Sadly, that greater covenant of “out of many, one” has been too often compromised by bigotry based on race, class, nationality or sexual preference. Breaking bread together can help us break through that bigotry to a vision of common humanity.
So as we gather at our tables this Thanksgiving, may we give thanks for food, friends, family and all we are given. And may we pause to ask our Creator to grant us a greater hunger for peace, justice and a more expansive table of loving welcome.
Ben Tousley has worked as a hospice chaplain for the past 20 years both on the North Shore of Boston and in the Pioneer Valley for Cooley Dickinson. He was adjunct professor at Springfield College for 23 years as well as working as a folksinger and storyteller around New England. Ben lives in Greenfield.