As we prepare for Thanksgiving in the USA, please take a moment to reflect on who went before you, planting and harvesting ALL that benefits you.
Then please remind yourself that you are going to be supporting others through your example, in action, with prayer, and with purpose-filled intention to be openhearted and open-minded.
For more than 15 years, I worked with an educational program that supported a "Harvest of Hope." It supported the wishes and dreams of agricultural workers for their children to access the full range of public education services, wherever they traveled, from Florida to Maine, Texas to Michigan, California to Idaho, from Puerto Rico, across all 48 continental states, through Alaska and Hawaii. It only took me a few months to understand at a gut level that these families were working for *my* welfare and comfort. Ever since, no matter how I purchase, prepare, and enjoy my meals, I'm aware of their labor, their poverty, their dignity, their hopes, and (because I was able to meet some of the families and educators who worked with them) some of their successes.
May your Thanksgiving bring you awareness of how you benefit by those who shared their hopes, dreams, and prayers to help and guide you. May you become more generous as you cultivate your world and grow your deepest desires.
How will we harvest Hope?
Everything we gather grows from what was planted.
If we measure rows, careful to drop
one kernel, then another,
opportunities align.
Scattered seeds, windblown or at will,
call to songbirds, brighten meadows,
dance with bees,
turn to honey.
If we broadcast dreams,
stars appear to guide the lost.
When we give thanks for acts of kindness;
savored sweetness; light through darkness,
we are gleaning Hope.
Our whispered prayer of
gratefulness, leaves a
bit of Hope to
feed another soul.
DonnaMarie Fekete,
November 23, 2016