Eucharisteo

Issue 03 | November 2025

Renee Eiler, Lead Writer

Photograph by Vanessa Thomas

The heart of Thanksgiving can be sobering. It is the time of year where we are faced with choices. How will you speak? What do others gather from you as they are around you? What impression will my presence give of the year that I’ve had? For many of us, we are surrounded by loved ones that we see not more than a couple of times a year, and the expectations remain the same at every holiday gathering: be thankful. The culture around us compels us to give some form of thanks surrounding the holidays, and those who do not are no better than a 21st century Mr. Scrooge. No life can be held up as a heralded perfection, yet somehow we all feel that somewhere there must be a life worthy of that. Our eyes wander to the soul beside ours, wondering if their life is truly either as beautiful or as horrific as we surmise it to be. We assess, we assume, we ask questions, we make judgments. Some of them are innocent, and some of them are not. If we are not thankful, we feel guilt. We feel shame. We sense lack, and the lack puts us in a place of feeling that thanksgiving is out of place. Perhaps for some, the thanks may even feel disingenuous. We look around our homes and our lives, and perhaps even the world at large, and we wonder why we cannot possibly be thankful for what we do have, however little it may be.

The heart is keenly aware of what it is missing. In the midst of a world that possesses a short and boxed-up script for every possible scenario, we slip into the status quo and bemoan ourselves for saying the same things that everyone else around us says. We inwardly groan because we know it is not real. We understand that it is a pre-programmed, rhythmic response that may at times have its temporary place, yet it has no sustenance in a world that moves so quickly. The truth is missing. The sincerity is absent. The hope is a distant memory.

But, dear reader, what is thanksgiving? I do not speak in terms of a mere day that we celebrate one time a year, but the whole of thanksgiving itself. Is it a thing that we do, a task we take on as one more thing to add to our daily to do list: “Be thankful”? Is it an effort we give, putting forth just a little bit more willpower, a little bit more self-righteousness cloaked in holy language? Is it a quality that comes and goes, a hope and a dream long-lost that we all know can never truly be despite our best attempts?

Or is it a state of being?

A thing that we become…

A choice we make…

And the embodiment of a change within us?

Thanksgiving was never meant to be an event. It was never intended to be words. It is not a weapon to wield against another soul, a burden to place on their back so they may only feel loss, insignificance, and persecution. It is not a scale of holiness to determine those who may earn God’s favor and those who may not.

Thanksgiving is faith. It is a choice to take up our life, our fears, our struggles that never seem to end, our “cherries on top,” and to name them for what they are: opportunities. Life does not happen to us. This thinking is a cheat…a way to believe that you have achieved something you have not. A way to sustain problems in your life. Part of life is a series of choices, your own and others’, and a domino-effect to those choices. In the midst of those choices, the gate of our heart is opened and we can receive. To receive the gifts we have been given is the true gift – the gift of growth. What soul, when it really comes to it, would wish to remain the same as they are? The same as they were 2 years ago? 5 years ago? A decade or more in the past? To remain the same is to close that gate into our hearts and to refuse the gifts we are being offered, along with the opportunities we are given to learn.

Thanksgiving is the key to the gate.

When we are faced with a decision of whether or not to express gratitude and impart grace to our hearers, most of humanity makes one of two choices: either we say all the proper words and choose to fit in but we doubt the realities, or we choose to rebel in the name of vulnerability and honesty by ceasing to even pretend we are thankful, meeting the expectation to be thankful with its rival, open complaint.

But what if there was a third option? What if we could choose our words and the posture of our hearts with all the intention, beauty, and honesty we know and express gratitude anyway? What if we chose to reject the rampant falsehood and the current system while paving the way for a new one? What if choosing to trust that our hardships are part of a bigger picture than we ever imagined actually brought us freedom? Our hardships have the opportunity to mold us into something more beautiful, and it is an act of faith that we can’t afford to reject.

So as you walk into a season of expectation surrounding the holidays that we all love, choose an alternate path. Choose to be the vulnerable, but also the beautiful. Declare it out loud in moments of collapse and dismay. May we let our words flow from the inner workings and embodiment of something that isn’t a part of this world. May we shine with the kindness and the grace that someone needs today and know that our words hold more power than we realize. And may we hold the key to the gate of growth with confidence and stillness, knowing that change is not wrought in a night, but, like the seasons of our year, they are wrought in the surrender to those changes “following one another softly like pearls slipping off a string.” (Anne of Avonlea)