Coming Together When Things Are Falling Apart

by Alan S. Miller

Marin County, California
November 24, 2005

Thanksgiving is a time when families and friends traditionally come together to give simple thanks for life and for all the good things we have received during the year.

It’s an important time for celebration. Most all of us know deep down that we have been granted far more than we have perhaps deserved. We do tend in our “want it now, have it now” society to take a bit too much for granted.

But there is also another side to our holiday celebrations—remembering those whose luck has not been quite as one-sided as much of our own has been. It’s sometimes hard to both celebrate the good things in our lives and at the same time reckon with the way the balance sheets have so often been tipped in ours rather than someone else’s favor.

My acquaintance Tom Ambrogi, who served as Director of Social Justice for the Archdiocese of San Francisco during the 1970’s, gave a powerful talk this summer on the importance of coming together and counting our blessings even when so much of the world outside our windows is full of suffering and sadness.

He began his talk by quoting the Roman poet Virgil who wrote: “There are the tears of things, and mortality bears down on the mind”.

Tom then said, “The tears of things. The human situation bears down upon us. All the untended hunger and disease half forgotten by most of us: in Uganda, Darfur, Congo, Rwanda, Somalia, Zimbabwe. Half forgotten. The desperate situation in Haiti, the savagery in Uzbekistan. The tears of things in 38 years of Israeli occupation in Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem. The tears being shed by our brothers and sisters in Iraq, in the prisons of Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo, the tears of the vast human destruction...of this illegal and immoral war that has created a darkness of soul across our land.

Virgil’s “tears of things” should also be visible to us at home. We remember all the people immediately present to us in Marin who will not share the same kind of table many of us will have on Thursday.

We remember the hundreds of homeless people here in our Rainbow county, most of whom are only indirectly responsible for their plight.

We remember the thousands of immigrants in the Bay area whose search for security and whose daily struggle for survival deserves our respect and whatever help we can provide.

We remember all those who are lonely or ill because we care and because we know that some day it will possibly also be our turn to be lonely or ill.

Tom Ambrogio is right. It simply is not enough to gather and celebrate who we are and what we have been given. It is as clear as it can be that, if we can, our first task this year at Thanksgiving is to enjoy and be present with all of those whom we hold most closely to our hearts. It is such a good thing to be together.

But the second step is to perhaps remember the final words of Oscar Romero, the Archbishop of San Salvador who was murdered by right wing thugs because of his ministry to the poor. Shortly before his death, Romero said, “Try not to simply depend on hope, because unfulfilled hope leads to despair. Try instead to be faithful”.

This Thanksgiving, many of us will rejoice in being with our family and friends. We will try to remember as well as we can to be faithful to those who suffer in today’s world. And perhaps we will recommit ourselves to sharing our time and resources with those who deserve both.

I am glad for the reminders that have already arrived in my mail box this holiday season—from the Red Cross and Oxfam and Doctors Without Borders and the Salvation Army and Homeward Bound and Ritter House and the Marin and San Francisco Food Banks and our local churches.

And I will remember the counsel of a colleague who once wrote, “It is important to know the difference between charity and justice. Charity is a matter of personal attributes; justice, a matter of public policy. Charity seeks to alleviate the effects of injustice; justice seeks to eliminate the causes of it.”

Perhaps this Thanksgiving, we can come together with those we love, and also vow to do something about all the places in the world where things are once again falling apart for our sisters and our brothers.

Copyright © 2005 Alan S. Miller
Last updated: November 28, 2005