Two Thanksgiving Stories
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Story One
There is an unhappy, homesick Doctor who lives in a small town in Alaska, and he is Jewish. Here, he must work for several years against his will. What he doesn't know is that the custom at Thanksgiving is to pelt white/fair skinned people with tomatoes. All the other people in the town endure, and even enjoy the custom-it doesn't seem to bother them, and they feel that it creates a sense of unity in the town, especially considering the history between their peoples. The doctor cannot believe this, and feels this custom is ridiculous-especially since he is Jewish not white. Throughout the holiday, bad things after bad thing continue to happen to him to the point that he feels he has no hope. Upon seeing this, his Native American friend and co worker tell him a story. She says:
"Death, like the white man wasn't happy in his own land. He didn't think his kingdom was big enough. He wanted more. One night, when the good spirit was asleep, death attacked the world.
He killed a lot of people and took the chiefs prettiest daughter as his bride. She pretended to be a good wife, but one day she secretly fed him a pumpkin seed. The pumpkin grew and grew inside death. Finally, he exploded and a million pumpkin seeds covered the earth.
...a lot of people died. But a good thing came out of it to...pumpkins. Its the same with white people. The cleared the forest, they dug up the land, and they gave us the flu. But they also brought power tools and penicillin and Ben and Jerry's ice cream."
She then tells him that because he has suffered and has no hope, like the rest of her people, he can march with them in their Day of the Dead parade on Thanksgiving. Through out the rest of the series, the doctor has to endure many frustrating things-he loses his fiance and home, he is forced to stay in a place he originally hates, and so on and so forth. Yet by the end of the show, he realizes that even though this move was hard, he has gained so many lifelong friendships and relationships, and a new found lease on life. Even though some hard things happened, some really good things came out of it.
Even though bad, and unexpected things happen to us, or even when we feel people take everything we hold dear, we can still find things to be grateful for like his coworker/friend did. As we do that, our lives become better and we find ourselves happier. I know this is true from experience.
*This story is from a show called Northern Exposure, in the Season 4 Episode 8.
Story Two
The second story was shared years ago by the prophet of my church. It is long, but worth reading. You can find the whole things here. The part I want to share says:
“How would you feel toward a teenager who decided to toss a 20-pound frozen turkey from a speeding car headlong into the windshield of the car you were driving? How would you feel after enduring six hours of surgery using metal plates and other hardware to piece your face together, and after learning you still face years of therapy before returning to normal—and that you ought to feel lucky you didn’t die or suffer permanent brain damage?
“And how would you feel after learning that your assailant and his buddies had the turkey in the first place because they had stolen a credit card and gone on a senseless shopping spree, just for kicks? …
“This is the kind of hideous crime that propels politicians to office on promises of getting tough on crime. It’s the kind of thing that prompts legislators to climb all over each other in a struggle to be the first to introduce a bill that would add enhanced penalties for the use of frozen fowl in the commission of a crime.
“The New York Times quoted the district attorney as saying this is the sort of crime for which victims feel no punishment is harsh enough. ‘Death doesn’t even satisfy them,’ he said.
“Which is what makes what really happened so unusual. The victim, Victoria Ruvolo, a 44-year-old former manager of a collections agency, was more interested in salvaging the life of her 19-year-old assailant, Ryan Cushing, than in exacting any sort of revenge. She pestered prosecutors for information about him, his life, how he was raised, etc. Then she insisted on offering him a plea deal. Cushing could serve six months in the county jail and be on probation for 5 years if he pleaded guilty to second-degree assault.
“Had he been convicted of first-degree assault—the charge most fitting for the crime—he could have served 25 years in prison, finally thrown back into society as a middle-aged man with no skills or prospects.
“But this is only half the story. The rest of it, what happened the day this all played out in court, is the truly remarkable part.
“According to an account in the New York Post, Cushing carefully and tentatively made his way to where Ruvolo sat in the courtroom and tearfully whispered an apology. ‘I’m so sorry for what I did to you.’
“Ruvolo then stood, and the victim and her assailant embraced, weeping. She stroked his head and patted his back as he sobbed, and witnesses, including a Times reporter, heard her say, ‘It’s OK. I just want you to make your life the best it can be.’
What a great story that is, greater because it actually happened, and that it happened in tough old New York. Who can feel anything but admiration for this woman who forgave the young man who might have taken her life?"
Even though this story is clearly about forgiveness, I wanted to share it bc it is also about gratitude. This boy will always be grateful to this women for giving him a second chance at the life he almost threw away-even though he almost took hers. As she lives on in a spirit of Thanksgiving for her life, she is sharing that with others and making the entire world a better place.
This Thanksgiving holiday, my heart is touched as I think of all I have to be grateful for and all the examples and the stories I have to remind me of this fact. May we all live in a spirit of Thanksgiving, like the people in these stories. Now-onto CHRISTMAS!
