by The Standard | October 8th, 2020 Podcast https://thestandardnewspaper.ca/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/Autumn-Days-Oct-8th-2020.wav
The colours are changing and it’s been getting a little colder, but we have lots of year left, and I am thankful for that. “The Season of Thanksgiving”, starts in late September early October and goes through to the end of Orthodox Christmas in the fresh new year! It’s a season of acknowledgement of so many good things which have gone before, and continue in their spirit today. Thanksgiving Day, ushers us into ‘The Season of Thanksgiving.’ It’s when we communicate our gratefulness for the bounty we share in our lives and at our tables, for our country and it’s freedoms and the communities we live in, and their relative safety. Traditionally: a word which is, by ignorance and even arrogance, understood to mean a relic of the past. What follows is the error of thinking the past is completely gone. This makes as much sense as thinking, ‘Yesterday we had rain and today this has nothing to do with us.’ Well, if it had not rained we would not have water in our water table within the week, and we would have little to nothing supplying our drinking water within a few weeks. In addition, lakes would dry up, after that we would have no life! So, along these lines, I have something to say to anti-community, anti-fellowman or I guess fellow-people, always failing, cancel culture people, “Get with it, wake up!” Without the past and the traditions we derive from it, we would be destined to repeat it’s errors, still floundering in a malaise of the unlearned, without any clear direction. To navigate anywhere, there is always the need to regularly refer to where you came from. I mean just try to draw a straight line or even a curved line without a beginning point, it’s not possible. Well I digress, but my point still holds. Traditionally, at Thanksgiving, we communicate our gratefulness for the condition of our lives, and the people in them. Today there seems to be a disconnect between what we see in our grocery stores and our understanding of the hard work, the blood, sweat and tears, which goes into cultivating, planting, harvesting and getting to market the food we eat. This is farmers! They have always been what has kept our country alive! Without them nothing would have been built. No food, no strength to build, then, no freedom to innovate and invent, so no growth of a country. Farmers have always been on the front line, traditionally, all through our lives, ensuring we all have enough to eat so we may survive and even thrive! Their results are in your refrigerators and cupboards right now. Maybe it would be good for us all to, traditionally, raise one up, (by this I mean, a prayer to God in thanksgiving), for our Ontario farmers and those all over Canada. Without this tradition and those who live in it today, everyone else would not really have a today. Not to mention all of their efforts to keep up the food chain supply during the Covid situation. Many industries shut down during this time but farmers have trooped on, it’s what they do, because it’s who they are, it’s tradition, and it’s nobility itself, in this man’s opinion! It might be a good idea to pause and think about this, (Selah) and allow for a moment, a sense of gratefulness to fill you up, around the idea of hard working farmers. If you know any farmers, drop them a line, an email, or even a visit this thanksgiving season, for no other reason than to express to them how much you value the work they do for you and yours. To all of our farmers I say, a hearty “Thank-you, for all your work, and a very sincere God Bless You!”
Happy Seasoning!