Happy Thanksgiving

Dean has been saying for some years that Thanksgiving is the best holiday of the year, gathering with family, having a great meal and watching football.  I hope you find much for which to be thankful this Thanksgiving.  This is a great country country (beautiful too, as my recent vacation reminded me) and we should thank God for all we have.

Giving Thanks for a Great Nation

Any number of headlines popped up this week regarding this or that complaint about Thanksgiving.  Meanwhile, Americans will feast together in record number to celebrate their good fortune.  The few that do not will be in the small minority.  We are truly the most blessed nation on the planet and have much to be for which to be grateful.  We have freedom, a culture that supports freedom and unimaginable wealth.  Even our poor would be considered rich in the third world.  So I am giving thanks for our country and the bounty God has provided.  I do so with a sense of humility, knowing that God's goodness had a great deal to do with our good fortune.  Our rights and our wealth come from His Providence.

In the spirit of the season, I watched the original Red Dawn, starring Patrick Swayze.  How is it in the spirit of the season?  It captures the film maker's sense of who we are as a nation at our core; which is only revealed in the crucible of grave crisis. I agree with Max Lucado, who said that crisis doesn't develop character, crisis reveals character.  I worry that events will soon reveal the character of the nation; I am not worried that we will rise to the occasion, just that we will be slow to respond at first.

Have some turkey, the ones the President didn't pardon, and enjoy time with family and friends.

Here is my favorite patriotic hymn that I always associate with Thanksgiving, even though it was written to celebrate the 100th Independence Day.  God of our Fathers from the Mormon Tabernacle Choir.

Thanksgiving 2011 - Beers With Demo re-post

Beers With Demo re-post. As an experiment while Dean's blog is down, I am re-posting his Thanksgiving day post from Google reader. Here is Dean's post from November 24.





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Consider it done. Thanksgiving has surpassed our former favorite holiday, Christmas. No gifts, no lame office parties, no tacky sweaters.


Just food, football, family and friends... Box that superfecta in any order you prefer.


We hope everyone is enjoying a safe and blessed Thanksgiving with their loved ones today.


We'll see you all tomorrow.

Thankful

Happy Thanksgiving to my American readers; and to for my readers in other countries, I hope you find in America a country that the world should be thankful for.

A few things that I am thankful for personally.

• That God, through Jesus, asked me to follow Him, and it changed my life and its trajectory.
• For a wife who loves me fiercely and keeps my attention.
• For two sons with whom I am closer than I ever thought possible.
• For my parents who loved me and held me to high expectations.
• For my brothers, sister and my in-laws, that I have the love of so many.
• That I live in a country blessed by freedom.
• That I have meaningful work. That my federal job is not at risk every election.
• That I have met fellow patriots who are now my friends.
• That I have the opportunity to make a difference in this world, and leave my little part of it better than I found it.

Happy Thanksgiving, may God bless your day. Now we are off to put together the traditional celebration spread, so I hope to write something relevant and worthwhile tomorrow.

Happy Thanksgiving

Light blogging today as Mrs. Daddy and I prepared for Thanksgiving. Special props to our guest Jesse, who brought some Rolling Thunder IPA and Golden Glow Pale Ale from Central Coast Brewery in San Luis Obispo. A little music appropriate to the holiday follows:

Happy Thanksgiving

Light blogging recently as we prepare for guests at the B-Daddy household for Thanksgiving. We will miss our missionary in-laws in Lithuania, God's blessing on their work with orphans there.

I give thanks to God for personal good fortune in marrying the best wife I could ever imagine, having the love of a good family and knowing how God loves us as proved by sending his son Jesus.

I am also thankful for living in a great country, not a perfect one. I am confident that our current economic troubles will be overcome, sooner we pray, but later if necessary to correct flaws in our thinking. The people of the country have a tendency to correct the excesses of previous eras and continue to build a more perfect union of our states.

No matter our current troubles, we should remember that the modern obasevance of Thanksgiving on the last Thursday in November dates to a proclamation that was made in the midst of a bitter Civil War where brother fought against brother and friend against friend. The war destroyed a good portion of the agricultural base of the nation and killed a larger percentage of the population of any war before or since. In spite of that ongoing tragedy or perhaps because of it, Abraham Lincoln saw fit to proclaim a day of thanksgiving. Here is the original proclamation (authored by William Seward):

The year that is drawing towards its close, has been filled with the blessings of fruitful fields and healthful skies. To these bounties, which are so constantly enjoyed that we are prone to forget the source from which they come, others have been added, which are of so extraordinary a nature, that they cannot fail to penetrate and soften even the heart which is habitually insensible to the ever watchful providence of Almighty God. In the midst of a civil war of unequaled magnitude and severity, which has sometimes seemed to foreign States to invite and to provoke their aggression, peace has been preserved with all nations, order has been maintained, the laws have been respected and obeyed, and harmony has prevailed everywhere except in the theatre of military conflict; while that theatre has been greatly contracted by the advancing armies and navies of the Union. Needful diversions of wealth and of strength from the fields of peaceful industry to the national defence, have not arrested the plough, the shuttle or the ship; the axe has enlarged the borders of our settlements, and the mines, as well of iron and coal as of the precious metals, have yielded even more abundantly than heretofore. Population has steadily increased, notwithstanding the waste that has been made in the camp, the siege and the battle-field; and the country, rejoicing in the consiousness of augmented strength and vigor, is permitted to expect continuance of years with large increase of freedom. No human counsel hath devised nor hath any mortal hand worked out these great things. They are the gracious gifts of the Most High God, who, while dealing with us in anger for our sins, hath nevertheless remembered mercy. It has seemed to me fit and proper that they should be solemnly, reverently and gratefully acknowledged as with one heart and one voice by the whole American People. I do therefore invite my fellow citizens in every part of the United States, and also those who are at sea and those who are sojourning in foreign lands, to set apart and observe the last Thursday of November next, as a day of Thanksgiving and Praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the Heavens. And I recommend to them that while offering up the ascriptions justly due to Him for such singular deliverances and blessings, they do also, with humble penitence for our national perverseness and disobedience, commend to His tender care all those who have become widows, orphans, mourners or sufferers in the lamentable civil strife in which we are unavoidably engaged, and fervently implore the interposition of the Almighty Hand to heal the wounds of the nation and to restore it as soon as may be consistent with the Divine purposes to the full enjoyment of peace, harmony, tranquillity and Union.

Thanksgiving Toast

The blogging was light lately, helping Mrs. Daddy get ready to host ravenous Thanksgiving guests. To accommodate really great couple, we had turkey dinner on Friday this year. Thought I would share my toast:

"To Democracy! Where else, but in a democracy as great as ours, could a humble community organizer, whose greatest achievement was editor of Harvard Law, could rise through the cauldron of Chicago politics to become the President of the United States. To Democracy!"