Once more reviving my old “Thanx” posts. (See here for a full description of the genre.) Making a Thanksgiving post once a year on the eve of the holiday is wildly inadequate. As a friend recently told me, it should be thanksliving. He’s right. G. K. Chesterton was on target when he said,

I would maintain that thanks are the highest form of thought; and that gratitude is happiness doubled by wonder.

In that spirit, I offer this woefully skimpy inventory, from the sublime to the ridiculous to the ridiculously sublime:

1. God (Good start, huh?)
2. My extended family (most of whom will be together on Thanksgiving)
3. Eight years with St. Matthew
4. Small and large groups
5. Jigsaw puzzles
6. Bucket list bike trips
7. One good leg
8. Unexpected encounters, calls, and visitors
9. Grace
10. Learning lessons, even the hard ones
11. New City Microcreamery
12. Isaiah predicting today’s news
13. MS Cure is back in business!
14. Burger Night at State Road
15. Sitting on the beach in mid-November
16. Ari’s grotto
17. The trapeze and fear of transformation
18. Ground Round Reunion
19. Uncle Beef
20. Nashoba Brook Bakery
21. The Sheriff’s Meadow
22. The blessing of generosity, no matter which end of it I’m on
23. Lessons and Carols and Jenna
24. Rosewater chicken sandwich and lemon pound cake
25. Accessible vans
26. Lexie’s Lemonade
27. 45.5 years
28. “The Quiet Girl”
29. Answering the call
30. Memory so bad that rereading books is a pleasure
31. etc. etc. etc. …

Look, I know the great majority of these are obscure beyond reason, but they’re understood by the bless-ee and the bless-er and that’s all that really counts.

I wish you and yours a happy and grateful Thanksgiving!