Written by: Rabbi Neil F. Blumofe

Each fall semester, I teach a course at St. Edward’s University called Jazz in America – an opportunity for my students and I to trace and appreciate the magnificent art of improvisation that is imbedded in and helps to define our American culture.  As we anticipate the moment of Thanksgiving upcoming this year, we can refresh our gratitude for our abundance as we realize that our lives don’t have to take on a specific pattern.  We are not merely remade in the image of those who have come before us.  While we learn from them, as an aspiring musician learns from the masters, we take the finest of their playing and we add our own voice to make something new.

As we are daily immersed in the privileges of tremendous choice and customization/isolation in our everyday life, how may we cultivate a powerful practice of gratitude?   As we choose this and not that, how can we be sure that we have made a wise and considered decision, especially when so many other options are also so attractive?  How do we gain an opportunity to give thanks for our making a firm commitment?

Thanksgiving teaches us that at heart, we as Americans are not a fatalistic people – destined to repeat what has already been established.  Even in all of its freighted complexity, how unexpected it was for the Pilgrims to sit together with the Native Peoples, at once suspicious and hopeful, sharing the produce of common effort, as a wholly new moment was crafted together.

Past times of impenetrability and difficulty, when I question the efficacy of small endeavors, I choose to be active with and support the efforts of Interfaith Action of Central Texas (iACT) to discover surprising moments of grace and compelling bursts of similitude and empathy among a diverse and different collection of worldviews.  I participate not to be soothed into a soporific kumbaya, but rather to be jarred awake – to be moved and jostled out of my predilections and judgments.  I want to attend the mythic Thanksgiving celebration with folks who are different from me and different from each other, and thus learn how to better improve my life and make improvisatory choices, steeped at once in many different traditions and customs.

This year, the Jewish eight-day Festival of Hanukkah converges with Thanksgiving – a very rare event.  Perhaps the true miracle of Hanukkah was not that the little bit of oil kept burning for eight days, or a determined group of people overcame overwhelming forces to preserve and celebrate their way of life – perhaps the greatest miracle of Hanukkah was the collective lighting of the oil lamp in the first place, with the meager amount of oil available.  The taking of a chance in unknown circumstances.  The courage to sound the first note in an unfamiliar chart of music.  The daring to make peace with fear and to join an ensemble, looking for inspiration in the songs singing from the souls of others.

As if on Divine cue, all of us need to be reminded of the power of Thanksgiving – and having Hanukkah at the same time helps us.  What offerings do we bring to the table?  Which person among many will we choose to be?  Will we be wracked with apprehension and armored in our judgment, unable to find portion control in our privilege?  When will we decide to light our modest candle, and will we pay attention to the compounding light that it may bring, maybe even past our length of days?

Our entire Austin community is invited to attend the citywide celebration of Thanksgiving, sponsored by iACT.  ON Sunday, 24 November @ 3:00pm, we will gather at the St. Louis King of France Catholic Church – 7601 Burnet Road. Bring something for our greater Austin table (there will be Mobile Loaves and Fishes Trucks to take your dry goods donations) – on this day we may be inspired to discard our cynicism, and reconnect with gratitude – and enter into a possibility where we are simultaneously the confident and the startled – the rhythm section and the soloist.  We can choose.  Let us choose to participate publicly and to light our miraculous little candle that may illumine a bit of the thick darkness that reduces our world.