Day For The Discarded

This day used to be Thanksgiving.  A day I'd gather with family, watch football, walk on the beach, and relax into a familiar comfort.  When it was Thanksgiving, we'd take turns naming things we were thankful for.  

On this day that is no longer Thanksgiving, the one I have today, I'm thankful to those who taught me to be Alone.  I'm thankful for my sons.  And I'm thankful for the one Brother who stayed.

New Holiday

This new holiday found its meaning in the Solitude it imposed, perhaps the most delicious solitude I've known.  Each year, since the divorce of my family, I use this day to enter the vacated world in an attempt to fill my self.  

I choose a place away from home, and I drive its empty streets.  I write, and read, in sun-splashed coffee shops, and talk to strangers.  I try to witness the world as the outsider that I am.  This year, I was an outsider in Old Town Campbell. 

In the morning, I try to witness this part of the world, without it witnessing me.  I sit at an outdoor table at Starbucks and write. I eavesdrop on two conversations.  The first is between a family wearing Seahawk jerseys visiting from Redmond, Washington, and a man explaining, point by point, how their Hawks will lose to the Niners this evening.  

The second is between two elderly women discussing the ailing health of a mutual friend.  They talk about the central role God has played in each of their lives, and the sadness they each felt on independent visits with their sick friend as he struggles to find God beneath the weight of his fear of dying. 

One woman breaks into tears when she says, "I wish he would allow God to enter his life, so he could have the relationship God wants with him.  I want him to know the relationship with God that God offered me."

Light in Front of Me

Later, I pick up my brother at Jack-In-The-Box, and we drive across town to McDonald's where he orders a soda.  I have a hamburger and a milkshake.  What usually happens between us happens again, and we talk about Spirit, and God.  Mike speaks eloquently about a vision he has to help people diagnosed with mental illness re-enter the life they had before it.   He tells me about a woman in her sixties that he knows who comes to him for help.  "She keeps telling me she can't find her way back to who she was before," he says, "And I just reassure her that she will."  

I don't think my brother is aware of how extraordinary his journey back has been.  I don't think he understands the depth of strength, and courage, he possesses isn't the same depth you commonly find in others.  He does understand the desperation the woman is feeling, however, and he's determined to find a way to relieve it.  

On this day, this new holiday for the broken, and discarded, I bask in the religion that is my brother.  I bask in the only light in my life that I've never seen fade.  I bask in the hope that Mike has for his friend who is lost, and I bask in his hope for me.   I am thankful for this brother, the one who stayed.

I like the new holiday because what I enter is unfamiliar, and any entry into the unfamiliar elevates awareness.  It presses a thousand experimental personal beliefs into a single one that is galvanized.  

I desperately need both to occur.

The old Day of Thanks transformed itself from one that celebrated belonging, into one of being a grateful castaway. I use it to remind myself that being someone without a place, or a community to call home, doesn't mean I'm without one. 

I use this day to remind myself that I'm home everywhere.  I use it to remind myself that real community is found in kindness, and kindness is anywhere I go.  I use this day to manifest the things I'm missing.

Nightfall

After I drop my brother off I drive two blocks west to the 99-cent store where I buy 4 bags of groceries, and household products for twenty-seven dollars, and change.  The store is full of couples shopping together, parents shopping with children, and me, shopping alone.  But not really.  

I am among my tribe here.
I am broken.
I am lost.
I am Life.
I am Home.

I'm ready for my assignment to appear.  I don't need more than I have.  I don't want what I don't need.  I don't desire recognition, or thanks, for anything.  All I want is to serve.

This day that used to be Thanksgiving has become, for me, a day for the discarded.  It has become a day to be with others who have been left out, with no family to call their own.  It's a day to be reminded of how many people are willing to take you in. 

This is my favorite day of the year.