Poosey Digest: The blessing of thanks-giving

They said it was a straight-line wind – one of those blasts out of the west that just swoop down and tear the living heck out of things, and then they’re gone. Frankly, it doesn’t matter much if you’re hit by a tornado or a straight-line. The shingles on your house and the awning on your front porch don’t much care whether the wind is swirling or swooping.

John Levins got hit by a doozy last spring. It was one of those days when the weather had an upset stomach and the wind and whirl warning scrolled across the TV screen all day long. John was a collector. Not the hoarder type, but a fellow who took a genuine interest in all types of sweet memorabilia – license plates, old-fashioned apple peelers, rare calendars and what must have surely been the county’s largest collection of Mason jars.

When I got the phone call telling me that John’s storage shed had been destroyed I zipped right down to his place. By the time I got there most of the town had congregated in some effort to help out one of our town’s most cherished citizens.

It was a mess. Hardly a pot, picture or pickle jar was left intact. What wasn’t blown into the next county was busted, torn, or twisted – a lifetime of collecting gone in a single blast of Midwest wind. We did our best to help John brush off the few remaining collectibles and sort of made a pile of what couldn’t be salvaged, but there was little that was left of his once-marvelous collection.

Somewhere about 15 minutes into the work John hollered, “Hold it, folks!” I assumed that he’d come across something valuable that hadn’t been busted so I stopped my work – we all did. He was holding the twisted remnants of a John Deere two-row horse planter that had once belonged to his father. It was the “999” model, first produced in 1913. I couldn’t imagine what it was about the ruined antique that could possibly be causing the smile on John’s face. He stood there with the tangled steel wheel in his hand and looked at us.

“You folks won’t believe what I just found!”

Herb and I looked at the mangled planter. If John was calling this a good find then he’d been out in the wind too long. There was nothing repairable anywhere in the wind-strewn mess that once was John’s beautiful lawn. He said, “I just now discovered it! Look! Just look!”

We did. We saw nothing but destruction.

“I was just pickin’ through this pile,” he said, “and I looked up and seen all of you folks! What more blessed possession could a man have than a bunch of friends like this? You all got your own messes to tend to, but look what you did – you came down here to help out an old man with a few old knickknacks. Folks, there ain’t a thing I own that’s as wonderful as what I discovered just now!”

Then he told us to stop our picking and cleaning and join him in the house for a cup of coffee. “Forget the junk. That’s why God made bulldozers and dumpsters.” And over the coffee a sort of miracle took place – we all slowly forgot the windstorm and what it had done to our town.

We’ll all take some moments this week to at least make a mental list of our reasons to give thanks. ‘Tis the season. But I hope than in the midst of the turkey and talk we can think a minute about how the very act of giving thanks brings a healing on its own… how a grateful heart can cover a multitude of hurt.

It’s nearly impossible to hate when you’re giving thanks. Believe me, I’ve tried. You have to finally give up your bitterness in disgust and simply be happy.

You can’t hang onto envy and gratefulness at the same time. You’ll have to drop one or the other, and by the time you take a look at what you have you’ll soon forget about what you lack.

You can’t dwell very long on yourself when giving thanks. Nearly every blessing you have involves other people and there’s nothing like a good dose of getting your mind off yourself that’ll be as satisfying as any pumpkin pie you’ll encounter this week.

If you run out of reasons to give thanks this week, try giving thanks for the very act of thanks-giving. It’s more than therapy… it’s a life-saver.

You ever in Poosey, stop by. We may not answer the door but you’ll enjoy the trip.