America at Thanksgiving.
If you grew up with it, as I did, it’s reassuringly familiar part of the year’s rhythm, bridging the warmth of the Indian Summer to nippier temperatures with the accompanying intimations of winter’s chill.
Thanksgiving is, also, about gathering together with families, neighbours, friends – and friends of friends.
And it’s about abundance.
Americans have grown up with the story of the Pilgrims who’d travelled from an England that was increasingly intolerant towards their beliefs, their arrival and the advice they received from the Native American Indians, and their thankfulness for the resulting bounty.
They had good reason to be grateful, since they were taught to farm and live in an environment for which they were completely and utterly unequipped.
This brings to mind the issues that we’re facing today.
We’re in a new environment….all of us.
We’re being forced to reconsider the way we live, think about our resources, the way we acquire money – and our values…just as the pilgrims did.
What we’re facing goes deeper.
Those voyagers who departed England for distant and unknown shores were already guided by a profound spiritual link.
They had an absolute belief in a Higher Power.
But many of those travelling today’s path have lost that most basic of connections. We live in a materialistic era in which success is measured by possessions and assets.
This deep and destabilizing loss of values is depicted astrologically by a series of clashes, this year and next, between the most practical planet of them all, Saturn, and the uncompromisingly truthful Pluto.
While neither of these is considered a “spiritual” planet, each signifies a process of frank evaluation, reviewing what works, what doesn’t and, most importantly, what’s “real.”
Assessing what is in the best interests of the individual and of the collective – what’s good for everyone, not from the perspective of finances, but a more fundamental kind of security.
This conflict is occurring every day in the lives of every person.
But there are two examples, one on the national scene in the USA, and one that influences every country in the world.
First is the battle over health care provision in the US.
That involves ensuring every person can, and will, have access to medical care, should they need it.
But this means balancing the requirements of the numerous businesses which are profiting from existing arrangements, while answering the needs of the population as a whole.
Similarly, on a worldwide basis, on going issues with finances in general, and banks in particular, address the needs of individual consumers and a business sector that must be redefined because it exists in a changing world.
Yet, these changes must be made in a world in which – to state the obvious – cash must continue to flow.
The problems involved are complex.
So much that it’s easy to be swayed, if not confused, by each faction’s explanations of the facts – as they see them.
However, Saturn emphasizes practicality and Pluto, truth, which means that it’s time for every individual and every industry, including these behemoths, to first, face the facts. And then, having acknowledged sometimes difficult truths, to think as much about what the well being of the group as about their own survival and interests.
Return to that first Thanksgiving, with people helping others, and the process of creating a new approach to health care, to the banking world and addressing the economic realignment sweeping in terms of that first Thanksgiving and a very different strategy emerges.
What emerges is a Thanksgiving that isn’t just based on protecting one’s own interests but on joint interests.
And just as the Indians taught the pilgrims how to live through New England’s arctic winters, and learned how to raise – and cook – corn, turkey, potatoes and cranberries, humanity is learning how to look after itself, as a group – after its collective welfare – in a completely new way.
And perhaps, in honour of this holiday which accents humanity’s nobler characteristics of generosity and good will, instead of bemoaning the world’s woes, we might instead commit to becoming part of the solution.
Shelley von Strunckel ©2009
