Thanksgiving 2021

dear god, we thank you for our good fortune, and ask your blessing on this food and our love and our uh ... our ... uh ... and by the way, god, we are all falling apart. the center is shifting sand. we are all sliding down some anonymous throat into what looks like growing death. our lives are in the hands of conmen and bribe-takers. stupidity is hyped as wisdom, and wisdom is called enemy names. little natural light comes into the home of america. we are body and soul of the current american way – this failed 2021 state of union. we are broken and wounded and numbed and our spirits are strangling in fear and iso- - lation from each other. we feel virtually powerless and almost transfixed by the bleakness rushing to embrace us. the american plain spans before us like the ice of alaska and the lava of hawaii’s kilauea mother of god, i seem to have discovered that i'm everyone alive. everyone i see i find living in me. somehow i've become a home for everyone on the planet. i feel i must shield myself from their suffering, but the shields keep crumbling. we don't see how we're going to escape, god. we hope you'll free us from the nets entangling us. save us – show us an opening we haven't seen or made yet, something, somehow, we pray you with only the tiniest flicker of hope! amen.