RESPONSIVE READING “HANDS WIDE OPEN: A THANKSGIVING PRAYER”
Linked to the image to the left is a PDF of a Thanksgiving reading that I penned, called “Hands Wide Open: A Thanksgiving Prayer Reading”, in honor of a holiday designated for us to voice our thanks.
Hope my friends don’t mind if I ask for the price of a bagel and coffee for it. It’s an artist’s time and energy thing, and I have teenagers to raise. If you really can’t afford the $5, just let me know and I’ll email you one.
A sample of it is below. If you want to use it for your community or family, click here to download a full version of the reading (small fee, designed PDF version).
WITH HANDS HELD OPEN: A Thanksgiving Prayer Reading
By Dan Wilt
Celebrant: We give thanks, and lift the cup of joy to God.
Community: We are grateful, O God, for the wine of everlasting joy we drink at Your table.
Celebrant: We give thanks, and break the bread of hope in the presence of God.
Community: We are grateful, O God, for the bread of living hope we eat at Your table.
Celebrant: We give thanks, and pass the plate of friendship to our neighbor.
Community: We are grateful, O God, for the plate of love and friendship we share at Your table.
(Note: On How This Reading Can Be Done At A Meal: If this reading is shared as a grace to a Thanksgiving meal, the actions mentioned may be symbolically done to enhance the experience, or as an act of Eucharist (communion).
Consider lifting a cup, breaking a loaf of bread, passing a small plate of that bread, and sharing communion before you read the “reconciliation” lines. This would mean that the whole reading is done very slowly, allowing time for the elements to be distributed.
Then, once the bread and cup have been taken, and the reconciliation lines are read, a toast to the resurrection can occur and the ?nal prayers of gratefulness.)
Jeremy Begbie on Music In God’s World – Thanksgiving
“Music making and music hearing are ways we engage the physical world. Even in the case of electronically generated music, the body is often involved through, say, a keyboard, and patterns of vibrating air are mediated through physical speakers.
The physical things we involve ourselves with in music have ultimately arisen through the free initiative of God’s love—they are part of the ordo amoris. To treat them as given in this full sense has a series of radical implications for understanding music. The most basic response of the Christian toward music will be gratitude. This does not mean giving unqualified thanks for every bit of music we hear, but it will mean being thankful for the very possibility of music.
It will mean regularly allowing a piece of music to stop us in our tracks and make us grateful that there is a world where music can occur, that there is a reality we call ‘matter’ that oscillates and resonates, that there is sound, that there is rhythm built into the fabric of reality, that there is the miracle of the human body, which can receive and process sequences of tones.
For from all this and through all this, the marvel of music is born. None of it had to come into being. But it has, for the glory of God and for our flourishing. Gaining a Christian mind on music means learning the glad habit of thanksgiving.”
special thanks to Dave Congdon at the Fire and the Rose blog for lifting out this quote.