Five kernels

We all sat down to Thanksgiving dinner yesterday to find our plates empty except for a few uncooked kernels of corn. Five kernels on each plate, to be exact. It was all the Pilgrims had left, my wife explained, at their worst point. Five kernels of corn per person. I don't believe that story, but sometimes a little piece of fiction can run you right alongside truth in a way no messy set of facts or proofs ever can. And in this case the truth is that we have much for which to be thankful, and my good wife was darn sure going to see to it that we remembered as much.

So in between dinner-suffice to say that we had a goodly portion more per person than our Pilgrim forbears-and dessert we went around the table, each person naming something for which he is thankful, one scrap of thankfulness for each kernel of corn. Five kernels, five things to name. Piece of cake. Or pie, in my case, cherry pie, sitting and waiting for us all to get our thankfulness out of the way so we could resume our state-sanctioned gluttony.

The truth is that there have been plenty of times in my miserable, self-centered existence when I would have been hard-pressed to name five things. Or if I did name them, they would be petty things. However, something lovely about being wounded by a broken and sharp-edged world is that you learn thankfulness. Loneliness teaches you to rejoice in the sound of a friend laughing. Poverty teaches you to be content with groceries and a heater that works. Death teaches you love of life.

I don't know how even the smallest Pilgrim could last very long on five kernels of corn. I don't know how even a small Christian like me can begin to decide which five blessings to name, any more than one can identify which five teaspoonfuls are his favorite part of the ocean. There is the peace you take for granted, and food, and health, and friendships, and a job, and every breath you have left, and the fact that you get those breaths even though you rarely spend them as well as you should. There is the sound of your children naming their blessings, of seeing even the littlest put his hands together to pray, of knowing that the hands holding them in mercy and love are far stronger and gentler and fiercer than your own. There is knowing that you are in the grip of something so far beyond your words that when you look at those five kernels you can't help but laugh, because the entirety of your house couldn't hold all the corn you would need were you to get seriously down to the business of enumerating blessings.

And as I think on all this I wonder-why do I ever frown? Why do I ever grouse and drag my feet and imagine myself a martyr? I suppose I could do worse than to carry those five kernels around in my pocket every day, as a small reminder that my cup runs over, that my blessings are beyond measure, that I have not been dealt with as I deserve, but rather as a child whose Father loves him.