Happy Thanksgiving to you all...

Today is the Feast of Thanksgiving in the USA and it has been a week of gratitude for our household. First, Dianne was able to sing in the "Missa Gaia" despite her unknown inner pain. We give thanks for powerful meds and her inner strength.

The Missa was a blessing to perform and share - and while I grieved the illness of Rebecca - I reveled in Carlton's skill and beauty in bringing this complicated composition to birth in the Berkshires. He brings great joy to my life and to all the work of our shared ministries.

After the gig, we had a chance for an early Thanksgiving feast with Michal and Winton for whom I give thanks to God every day.

As the week unfolded, I found myself connecting with individual members of the congregation in need of someone to listen. This, too, evoked gratitude for a decision to spend more time giving attention to what I sense is a ministry quiet presence. It was fortified as we celebrated midday Eucharist, too.

And then Jesse, Mike and Louie arrived for another feast, mezze and French wine, along with LOTS of Louie-loving time.  We had a Thanksgiving breakfast of fresh muffins, Irish bangers and tea and coffee before they headed out.

Later this afternoon, we'll cook a stuffed pork roast and feast in quiet joy thinking back over a full year of blessings. This has been a sacred year for Dianne and me - not only a time of rest and renewal spiritually but also within our marriage - and I rejoice in her presence in my life. It is fitting that we will "do" Thanksgiving with a measure of solitude.

After a Thanksgiving dinner that can't be beat - and probably a nap - we'll watch Arlo do his 50th Anniversary "Alice's  Restaurant Complete Massacree" show on PBS (a gig filmed here in Pittsfield at the Colonial Theatre.)  

Tomorrow we'll spend some time at another doctor's office - for yet another ultrasound - and then spend some time walking before seeing "Suffragettes." The kids will be back Saturday morning and we'll chill with them for a short time before they hed back to Brooklyn - and then it will be Advent.  Grace and peace to you all.