As Americans celebrate Thanksgiving, we all, I think, find ourselves being thankful for many things.  I talked yesterday about Beethoven's Ode to Joy and its profound paeans to the wonder and power of existence. I am indeed thankful for life and how every human being has the opportunity to live it.  Even more, I am thankful for the God from whom life comes and in whom existence and the cosmos in which it dwells find meaning and sense.
     On the other hand, all of us are aware, I suspect, that countless people across the face of this vast planet do not have the opportunity to live life as they wish or please.  Too many people spend their days, the only days, I might add, that they will ever have on this earth, living lives bent by tyranny and oppression.  For this, I weep.  For this, I cringe, trembling at the inhumanity of humanity.
     Though little I or anyone could say can ameliorate the immediacy of these terrible situations, I will say, on this Thanksgiving Day, that we can be thankful that those of us who are not in subjugation, of whatever kind--religious, political, cultural, or economic--are given a moral sense that enables us to define and address and respond to these tragedies.  We can be thankful that we care, that we are moral beings who live in a moral universe.
     And for this, we can give thanks ultimately that we are not plops, as one person put it, of matter without a point or meaning.  We can give thanks that, ultimately, there is a God, a God from whom all morality comes. We indeed weep at oppression, we rightly cringe at human pain.  Yet because there is a God, we can also be thankful that no one, absolutely no one is totally ignored or forgotten.
     Wherever and whoever you are this Thanksgiving, be grateful for the grace and ubiquity of God.
     And live in it.