Year after year of Thanksgivings makes us wonder what's new that can grab our attention in this favorite of holidays that hasn't been too messed up by commercialism. My conclusion is that it is not gratitude alone but gratitude in the midst of adversity.
Martin Rinkert's hymn of 1663, "Now thank we all our God, with heart, and hands, and voices" came out of war and pestilence. Half the pilgrim colony dies in the first winter at Plymouth. We cannot imagine the re-living of those days, but at least we can try to understand the power behind this horrendous adventure to settle the new world.
Adversity dogged the pilgrim "separatists" from the beginning. Recently I came upon Louis Salome's document of the English side of the Mayflower's voyage. It is not pretty. It does make us proud.
The Mayflower tried to start in 1620 from London's south bank of the Thames River. It snuggled against the southern English coast touching Southampton, Dartmouth and Plymouth. On board was a handful of 102 religious separatists and other discontented Anglicans.
At Southhampton they were joined by 35 more from their exile in Holland. The second ship, the Speedwell, gave up after two starts. Her passengers joined those on the Mayflower. Some had had enough and disembarked at Plymouth.
The voyage left Plymouth and after 66 days on an over-crowded ship, landed at Provincetown, the tip of Cape Cod, on Nov. 21, 1620. Plaques and monuments tell the story today.
The Mayflower's captain and part owner, Captain Christopher Jones, headed for home on April 5, 1621. Less than a year later he died in London. The Mayflower died in 1624, was broken up, its pieces sold for about $205 in today's currency.
What do we, after 386 years, learn from this story? Sweeping aside the legends that Sarah Josepha Hale added in 1854 to William Bradford's book and romanticized by Currier and Ives, there is a message of God's love and grace in-spite-of.
Karl Barth once said, "The basic human response to God if not fear and trembling, not guilt and dread, but Thanksgiving."
It is a hard lesson. The millennial generation raised on Mr. Rogers and "no fault, no failures" philosophy, has a hard time understanding their grandparents' adversity -- gratitude out of the Great Depression and World War II. How can you understand why these poor Englishmen did not return with Jones, but gave to us a day to thank God, even in adversity?
Amen until next Wednesday.
The opinions in this column are solely those of the writer. Wolf is a retired minister and lives in Valparaiso. Write to him c/o The Times, 1111 Glendale Blvd., Valparaiso, IN
