The Sinister Minister's Thanksgiving Confession

I repost this every Thanksgiving without apology, and, yes, I'm a member of the ordained clergy.

However, I will apologize to Edgar Allen Poe for reasons you will soon discover...

The Sinister Minister's Thanksgiving Confession

by Alan Loewen

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

It has now been a good ten years and I feel this desire to unburden myself of secrets.

Anyway, there is little that any of you can do. You all live far away and most will treat my tale as a jest, so ironically even in the midst of confession, my secret is still safe.

We talked in the privacy of my office, the day before Thanksgiving.

He was a newcomer to our congregation. He glared at me, pale and cadaverous with eyes that burned with the fervent heat of fanaticism.

“Pardon the dust,” I said. “We’re remodeling the church.”

Intent as he was on his rant, he ignored me and the dust even though an occasional sneeze would interrupt his diatribe.

“I insist on addressing the church, this Sunday,” he said, his fist weakly pounding his knee as he spoke. “From the pulpit! You shock me, pastor, and I am deeply offended! Last Sunday you spoke on Thanksgiving as a holiday, even a holy day. You let an opportunity to teach a lesson on true holiness to those gibbering simps pass you by. Even now, they are out at the stores buying turkey and pumpkin and yams by the bushel so their unproductive elderly and their squalling brats can shovel food into their mouths. Well, what about the third worlders who today will only have cornbread? What about the freshwater porpoises? What about the labor practices in South America?”

I nodded in feigned sympathy. “Our church,” I explained, “places a large amount of its budget into charity. Though I confess we do not have a world impact, our local circle of influence is quite large.”

“Not enough!” he screamed. “Not enough! Do those hypocrites still drive cars that burn gasoline? Do they still have their thermostats set above 60 degrees? Do they still eat organic meat?”

“Well, they are almost all hardworking farmers and have been for generations …”

“Soybeans! Soybeans make tofu! They could grow organic soybeans!”

“May we walk as we talk?” I asked. “I did promise to inspect the masonry work.”

He stood up from his chair to follow me while gesticulating wildly. “And why are we wasting money adding on to a building? This certainly is not the church that Peter and Paul would have attended!”

We wandered the dusty hallways to where the workers had stopped for the day and gone home to their Thanksgiving preparations. As my companion ranted and raved, I inspected a recently completed concrete wall.

“Forgive me,” I said casually interrupting my companion, “but this workmanship here has me concerned for safety reasons. Could you help me test it? Just stand there.”

I laced a steel chain through the eyelet of a restraining bolt wrapped it around my companion and passed it through the eye of another. A few moments work was all it took.

“What … what are you doing?” my companion stuttered.

“I believe that because of my sad and selfish bourgeois attitudes, I have driven these poor manual laborers--these poor day laborers--to produce shoddy and dangerous workmanship. Please tug on these chains. If their work is truly inferior, I can protect them and their reputation from the building inspector and they can still keep their jobs.”

My companion tugged on the chains. Years of fanatically strict fruitarianism had weakened him to the point of inability to put up much of a resistance.

“Well, they seem strong enough,” he said. “Now please release me.”

I picked up a concrete block and laid it on the tile floor in front of him. “You were talking about Thanksgiving. What should I do with the turkey and other comestibles my arrogant wife is preparing for my greedy family?”

Freshly primed, he launched into a plan to drop ship the entire meal into either the Third World or New Jersey with an ingenious contrivance of fair trade Styrofoam packing and dry ice.

I let him ramble on as I worked on my job of creating a second wall.

It was now five o’clock in the evening, and my companion still droned on how eating Thanksgiving turkey contributed to global warming.

Yet, my own task was drawing to a close. I had completed the eighth, the ninth, and the tenth tier of concrete blocks. I had finished a portion of the last and the eleventh; there remained but a single stone to be fitted and plastered in. I struggled with its weight; I placed it partially in its destined position. But now there came from out the niche a low laugh that erected the hairs upon my head. It was succeeded by a sad voice, which I had difficulty in recognizing as that of my noble, altruistic companion. The voice said --

"Ha! ha! ha! -- he! he! -- a very good joke indeed -- an excellent jest. We will have many a rich laugh about it during church -- he! he! he! -- over our chicory coffee -- he! he! he!"

"Thanksgiving!" I said.

"He! he! he! -- he! he! he! -- yes, Thanksgiving. But is it not getting late? Will not they be awaiting you at home, your lady and the rest? I could treat you to some organic miso. Let us be gone."

"Yes," I said "let us be gone."

"FOR THE LOVE OF … "

"Yes," I said, "for love!"

I forced the last stone into its position; I plastered it up. Against the new masonry I put an old Sunday School flannelgraph. For the last decade no mortal has disturbed it. After all, who uses flannelgraphs anymore?

The church’s janitor complains that for the last ten years on the eve of every Thanksgiving she finds a small paper plate with two Saltine crackers next to a paper cup of water before the wall they built in the education wing. The one they built ten years ago.

I simply shrug my shoulders.

So on Thanksgiving, I hope that all of us, without guilt, will enjoy a hearty time of fellowship and celebration around a table groaning under the weight of food. And that once a year, we taste a little of heaven and relax and enjoy the camaraderie and the closeness of loved ones in spite of our mutual humanity.

Especially my own very weak humanity.

But if you find yourself railing against this simple annual pleasure and your thoughts of disgust and self-righteousness and contempt mar the celebration for others, please come to visit me in my office and explain it all in detail.

Just forgive the dust in my office. We’re remodeling the church.