Remembering our Relationship to All

Today is the Thanksgiving Holiday in the United States. This year Charlie and I host a potluck with friends who are our local family.

We are roasting the turkey, and making stuffing and sweet potatoes like our respective grandmothers did.

We will continue our tradition of reading aloud the Haudenosaunee Thanksgiving Address.

I first read about the Thanksgiving Address in Robin Wall Kimmerer's book Braiding Sweetgrass. The Haudenosaunee people generously share this prayer with the world. They speak it before every gathering of the people for any purpose.

On this fine day, we will step outside the house to the Grandfather Pine tree that watches over us. We'll circle the pine and read the prayer of Thanksgiving that is older than conquest.

The Grandfather White Pine

The White PIne is a tree sacred to the indigenous people of the Northwest. The Five Nations honored the White Pine as the Teacher of Peace. Robin Wall Kimmerer writes about this Tree in Yes Magazine: The Language of Trees.

It is important when we gather to bring our minds into alignment. The most potent way to do that is to acknowledge our relationship to all our relatives who make up this earth.

That relationship is gratitude.

This acknowledgement of all our relations seems more necessary and true this year than ever before. We have had a massive pattern interrupt. The people we love are not able to be with us. The structures and routines of our days feel broken.

This gives us space to tune into the depth of life all around us. We begin to feel what our indigenous neighbors have known all along. Everything is alive, and everything is our relation. Everything speaks to us, and everything listens.

We honor this relationship with the reading of the Thanksgiving Address.

I encourage you to adopt this practice with your family and friends. It is easily adapted to a gathering over Zoom or Facetime. Light a candle, and take turns reading this honoring of all life together.

You can share the Thanksgiving Address even if you are not in the U.S., or in winter. It is universal. It is life changing and heart opening.

You can download a copy HERE.

Wherever you are today, I hope you will connect to sacred relationship with yourself and with all our relations on this Earth and throughout the Cosmos.