Harvest Prayer

In America it is time for Thanksgiving, a holiday that Americans celebrate every autumn. While its celebration is pervasive among Americans, it is often an almost reflexive habit. Much of the underlying meaning has been lost as our technologies and skills have increased and brought with them much greater security.

Thanksgiving was a Harvest Festival. Few, if any, in the Civilized World can truly understand the visceral significance of that fact – though many of the rest of the People’s of the Earth certainly still can.

Harvest Prayer

The crops have been harvested;
The herbs have been dried;
The game and the herds have been salted;
We will survive.

We give thanks to the Mother
Who has shared of her bounty.
We are grateful for her teachings and her fruit.
We will survive.

We give thanks to the Father
Who has shared of his flesh.
We are grateful for his teachings and his blood.
We will survive.

Grateful are we who face the Winter.
Through the gifts of the Mother and Father
We are prepared for the cold season.
We will survive and we are grateful.

~*~

We will survive! In agrarian societies who are isolated from trade the fall harvest was – and still often is – the difference between Life and Death, not just for individuals but for whole communities. Is it any wonder that the harvest was a holiday – a Holy Day – of joy, relief, and thanksgiving?

We Americans are secure and wealthy and Thursday’s feast will be rich and sweet on our tongues – but how much sweeter was that first Thanksgiving feast when the Pilgrims knew it meant that they could live through Winter and see the coming of Spring?

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One Response to “Harvest Prayer”

  1. Personal Failure Says:

    Every time I see something about putting “Christ back in Christmas”, I want to have a little talk about coopting other people’s holy days. And, if I did have a time machine, the first thing I’d do is go have a talk with the natives about how helping out the Pilgrims was not the best of ideas for them.

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