Giving Thanks

I give thanks to my parents, for showing me what love is. And, to the ones whom I have broken and who have broken me, thank you for helping me know what love means and for helping me grow up to be a man. Thank you, friends and family and fellow travelers, for your patience and forgiveness. I am learning to love, from facing the harm I've done to others and to myself, and I'm doing my best to heal. Love as I feel it now is a wound that opens in abundance and, lacking nothing of itself, seeks only the good of others and works so that good may always come to others. There is precious little good, it seems, in the world of people, and yet so many good people in the world. There is so much good I could have given the world that I did not give, and the truth is there's a great deal of good I have taken from the world, and taken lightly, with not so much as a word of thanks.

I have more than thanks to give, more than words. I have my work to give, for the benefit of my students and fellow teachers, work that may, in turn, come to benefit the workers who toil and die every day for the benefit of those of us at the receiving end of a supply line that is stripping the world of its resources at a rate unprecedented in all of human history.

I say this with a full, open heart wringing out: I can save my life only by giving it away (though with my son, Eli, and my daughter, Rachel, still in college and debts to settle, I'll continue to accept, with thanks, any honest pay for my honest work). I say this knowing there's work to be done and abundance to be shared, and many years of deep struggle for a great many deep people before any of us can hold ourselves up and say, justice has been served, justice for every child, woman, and man living on Earth. I have my vigor to give, and my sanity, such as it is. I have my courage and my patience to give--lord knows how my courage and patience have flagged.

And, with no claim of possession or sense of entitlement, I have my life to give, as it is given to me. I give my life to each one of my family and friends, to every person in my school community, to my neighbors, to the mountains and forests and deserts and rivers and plains and hills and coastlines of North America, to the wildlife that leap the fences and soar the skies and swim the waters and work the soil, to every human being whom I chance to meet, and, though I humbly and gratefully acknowledge my human limits, I give my life to this beautiful and beleaguered Earth that gives itself to all in such terrific abundance, day in and day out--this one, dear Earth, the only home I've known.