In Pat Conroy’s novel The Prince of Tides, the central character, a high school teacher and football coach named Tom Wingo, remembers the one bright light of his dark and violent childhood in South Carolina’s low country:
“Later, long after my grandfather was dead, I would regret that I could never be the kind of man that he was. Though I adored him as a child and found myself attracted to the safe protectorate of his soft, uncritical maleness, I never wholly appreciated him. I did not know how to cherish sanctity; and I had no way of honoring, of giving small voice to the praise of such natural innocence, such a generous simplicity.
“Now I know that a part of me would like to have traveled the world as he traveled it, a jester of burning faith, a fool and a forest prince brimming with the love of God. I would like to walk his southern world, thanking God for oysters and porpoises, praising God for birdsongs and sheet lightning, and seeing God reflected in pools of creek water and the eyes of stray cats. I would like to have talked to yard dogs and tanagers as if they were my friends and fellow travelers along the sun-tortured highways, intoxicated with a love of God, swollen with charity like a rainbow, in the thoughtless mingling of its hues, connecting two distant fields in its glorious arc. I would like to have seen the world with eyes incapable of anything but wonder, and a tongue fluent only in praise.”
Tom Wingo comes to appreciate his late grandfather’s perspective and awareness of the wondrous world around him. Though poor Tom’s grandfather developed a perspective of what is right and good and blessed in his life, that helps him to find meaning and purpose in his hard life.
Tom’s memory of his grandfather and the story of the ten lepers remind us of the importance and of moments of gratitude, the value of seeing what is good and right in our world, and giving thanks for it.
Such a perspective can help us to see our world not so much in terms of the material things that we can accumulate but rather in doing good and meaningful things for others.
May the Lord help us to be people of thanksgiving. May we be aware of God’s many blessings, especially in times of challenge and difficulty.
Thanksgiving is a couple of weeks away, but Thanksgiving does not have to be about just one day a year. Let us stop in the course of this day, notice something good in the midst of our daily business, and offer a prayer of thanks. It may well make a difference in your day.