A Thanksgiving Reflection on Freedom

The meal is over. The washing of the “good” dishes is complete. And the post-turkey somnolence has hit. Various family members have found couches on which to recline. I love the tradition of Thanksgiving. What a blessing to pause for one day to be thankful, to be grateful not just for the “things” of life but the people, past and present, who have made a positive impact on me. It’s an excuse to slow down enough to sit with each other awhile and enjoy our favorite Thanksgiving comfort foods together. At our house this means mashed potatoes, candied yams, cornmeal dressing, green bean casserole, corn pudding, apple salad with marshmallows and rhubarb/strawberry pie. Pumpkin pie was substituted this year by Spiced Pumpkin Latte Cheesecake. Decadent indeed! And of course, one must not forget turkey.

But I have to say that I’m not much of a fan of the turkey. Don’t get me wrong. I love to eat turkey but there’s something about the process of cooking the turkey that is tedious. The instructions on the turkey always say to thaw it in the refrigerator several days before cooking. Even if I diligently follow these directions, it seems that the center of the turkey is always still frozen. I want to know why the neck and other sundry parts are put into the center cavity. No one I know ever uses these parts but they are a devil to get out. Next year maybe I’ll buy a fresh turkey. I wouldn’t have an issue with thawing it and what to do with the “extra parts”.

We have a turkey farm just down the road from our house but they don’t sell directly to the consumer. I often walk by the facility and see all the turkeys looking out at me. Poor things! At least they’re not in cages. They can mill around among hundreds of their friends. This is all they have ever known. I don’t believe they are treated cruelly but they have never really tasted freedom. Most of us, if asked, would probably agree that it would be better for the birds to be “free range” rather than confined.

The question of whether it is better for animals to be confined or free was surprisingly discussed at length in the book, “The Life of Pi.” The movie never really attended to this but in a chapter of the book, the main character, Pi, recalled his experience of being part of a family who owned a zoo. He recognized that most people thought it was cruel to confine an animal. But he had a different view. The “cage” provided the animals with safety. As long as they had room to roam in their enclosure, they would make this area their “territory.” The cage provided protection from predators. Animals in the wild live with constant threats from predators but those in zoos live comfortably without this fear.

When I first read this, I saw it as a thought provoking view on the topic. The animals in the zoo are essentially given “caged comfort.” They have no need to worry about their next meal or whether they will be the next meal for a predator. Freedom is traded for comfort. The animals have no choice in the matter but as a society, are we not guilty of giving up our own freedoms for comfort? I see us relinquishing more and more of our individual freedoms to be taken care of by our government. Instead of taking personal responsibility for our problems, we seek government solutions. I would be the first to agree that government has a purpose. Rules must be set up to maintain a civil society. However, we now expect much more than this. Freedom is risky. We must depend on individuals to step up to help the poor, feed the hungry and care for the orphans. Unfortunately many individuals have stepped back and expect that our taxes will take care of these people. By doing this we distance ourselves from the needy and only widen the gap between rich and poor. There are still groups within my own community that reach out to the needy taking personal responsibility for their well being. We have Lunch Club at my church that serves meals to the children of Sheridan five days a week all during the summer and on holiday breaks from school. We know that government food stamps and welfare can’t provide what is really needed. The love and understanding shared when one person reaches out to help another person is lost when we depend on government to take care of our poor.

My prayer on this Thanksgiving is that we as Americans truly recognize and cherish the freedoms we have been given. Many individuals over the decades have died to preserve this freedom for us. We must not take it for granted or give it away easily. We must freely take a stand to care for each other, not depend on our government to do it for us.

I recently read a great blog post by Elizabeth Gilbert, author of “Eat, Pray, Love”. It was entitled, “Know where you have power, and where you do not have power…” I truly enjoy Liz’s honest, transparent discussions. To make her point, she used the illustration of Glenda the good witch in the Wizard of Oz, telling the Wicked Witch of the West, “You have no power here.” In essence, we have no power over anyone else but ourselves and even that is often difficult. “We must love each other. We must be kind to each other. We must be generous in act and spirit with each other. But for the sake of grace and sanity. WE MUST LET EACH OTHER BE.”

Liz is absolutely right. We cannot change people or “fix” them. But in response to her post, I ask the question, “What about our personal responsibility to each other?” Cain asked God this same question when he said, “Am I my brother’s keeper?” The answer to this question is not as easy as it may seem. If we see our brother running toward a cliff, do we just wave a greeting to them as they go by, without even voicing a warning? Where does responsibility end and meddling begin?

As my children were growing up, I admonished them to always watch out for their friends and each other. I have witnessed them doing this over and over. By caring in this way, they may very well have saved their friends’ lives. During one summer, when Garrett was a teen, I came home from work and noticed that he seemed very upset. I asked him several times what was wrong but he kept saying that he couldn’t tell me. Finally he admitted that a friend had asked him not to say anything about an incident that happened that afternoon. Obviously, he was distraught and eventually told me that he and a young man from our neighborhood had been skate boarding that day. His friend fell backwards, hitting his head on concrete. The blow knocked him out and while he was briefly unconscious, he had a seizure. When he awoke, he swore Garrett to secrecy since he knew his parents would not let him go on a planned water skiing trip the next day. Needless to say, alarms went off in my head when I heard this. I called the friend’s parents to tell them what happened and recommended that he go to the ER to be checked. Luckily, he had no serious complications but did have a concussion. However, another blow to his head could have been fatal.

I use this real story as an example to say that we must have some personal responsibility for the people around us. No, we can’t change them but we can suggest a different direction when they are involved in risky behavior. In Garrett’s friend’s situation, his parents took him to the ER. However, if he had been an adult he could have decided to do nothing. That would have been his choice and none of us could have changed that even if, in our opinion, it was a poor choice. Our loved ones can and will make choices that will hurt them. Sometimes that’s the only way a person learns is to experience negative consequences. However, I don’t believe that looking the other way in a situation like this with the excuse that it’s none of my business, is the right thing to do. I bet the parents of Lauren Spierer, the IU undergrad who has been missing now for over 3 years, wished one of her friends had stopped her when she walked home alone intoxicated. A little interference might have saved her life. We may never know.

I do realize however that there are times that interference is just meddling. There also are ways to speak the truth to someone who is moving toward the proverbial “cliff” that are productive and there are ways that are simply harmful. Often, instead of gently trying to move my loved one away from the “cliff”, I find myself tackling them in the process. I care for them and don’t want to see them hurt. But this approach never works. It only hurts my relationship with that person and generally moves them closer to the “cliff”, not away from it. Kind, loving, grace-filled conversations are much more likely to succeed. The difficult part is letting the person go when they choose to continue toward their “cliff” even after my warning. Maybe true love is helping them pick up the broken pieces after they fall.

I believe God calls us into community to lift each other up but also to hold each other accountable. I may grumble when I am held accountable but I also am grateful to my friends and family when they have done this difficult task. No, they don’t have the power to change me or fix me but words of wisdom to redirect me have saved me a lot of pain and grief over the years. Have I always listened? Certainly not and I have lived with the consequences.

Am I my brother’s keeper? No. We are each endowed by God with the free will to choose our thoughts and our actions. I cannot control these choices in anyone but myself. However, offering words of wisdom is my responsibility. To do otherwise would be indifferent and uncaring. That’s not the kind of world in which I would choose to live.