• By Annie Turner * Sermon delivered at Haydenville Congregational Church, Nov. 24, 2019 *. 

Thanksgiving can be a troublesome holiday for many of us: getting up early to put the ginormous turkey in; sitting down to eat at weird hours, like 2:00 in the afternoon; sharing food with relatives that we would rather not be in close proximity at all; listening to stories we have heard many, many times and then being forced to look interested and to laugh heartily; the cleanup which takes forever; and then the happy time when we wave people goodbye and mutter, as my brother-in-law did years back, “Ship ‘em!”

Then there is the awful realization that this holiday celebrates a time of calamity and mourning for Indigenous communities when privileged folks in the present mark the landing of the Puritans on Massachusetts shores. Many of us may remember that our former pastor, Andrea Ayvazian, sometimes went to Plymouth Rock to give vent to deep grief with Indigenous peoples who went there to wail and weep. I don’t think I could do that, but I can put kernels of corn on each person’s plate in memory of the help Indians gave to the Puritans, who literally would have starved to death without them. 

I love remembering something my wonderful Aunt Maggie said, as we thought of a distant ancestor that came over on the Mayflower: “Who wants to celebrate people who forbid dancing, didn’t drink, and eschewed bawdy feasts?” I heartily agree and lift a glass of good wine, not that I drink much anymore with my various health issues.

So, let me explain what a Spoonie is, in the title of my sermon, and you can figure out if you are one; I promise this will all tie together. A Spoonie is someone who has any kind of chronic condition that impacts their life: Be that mental illness in some form—depression, bipolar, schizophrenia or others; Alzheimer’s or any form of dementia; physical conditions including—POTS, Orthostatic Hypotension (what I have), chronic Lyme disease, cancer, Hashimoto’s Disease (thyroiditis), endometriosis, rheumatoid arthritis, glaucoma, and so many more diseases I could name that we would all fall to the floor in exhaustion.

The problem with being a Spoonie is that you so often look well, which hides your inner illness. People say to you, “But you look so healthy!” Don’t you believe it, and this is actually something that needs a gentle correction. Please check out this site: www.butyoudontlooksick.christine-misericando. Also, if you subscribe to my blog, you will see a fairly recent post, “Are You a Secret Spoonie?” Link is: http://faithismyos.blogspot.com.

And if you decide you are a Spoonie, here’s the fabulous metaphor for this: imagine you wake up in the morning and pull out a kitchen drawer. In it are 12 spoons. You decide how you are going to use them. Calling your mom might take 2 spoons; making your bed 3; taking a shower 2; driving kids to a soccer game, 2; making dinner 3. And that’s your 12 spoons used up, empty drawer, and no more energy to do anything. So nifty is this metaphor for energy that when I text my son about coming to dinner, he sometimes texts back, “Sorry, out of spoons.” No more needs to be said.

The trick about being someone with a chronic condition, and let’s hear it from the pews: how many of you have some kind of chronic condition? Yeah, I thought so. Maybe we will have to invent a secret handshake and build a clubhouse—on flat land, not in a tree like Calvin & Hobbes, because who can climb ladders anymore—for secret meetings. Here’s the problem I am facing and I bet many of you are facing as well:

How to celebrate major holidays, like our upcoming Thanksgiving, without energy, motivation, ability to drive, shop, and/or prepare food? What do we do?

Here’s what I do, and of course this will involve Amazon, some money, the postal service, and Trader Joe’s.

I find shopping for groceries basically kills me, hence my sweatshirt which you see with the legend—I AM DISABLED, on the back—and BRAIN FOG, (see the inserted “r” because with brain fog I forgot it!) on the front, ‘cause sometimes my brain just has a system crash and I cannot get out one word, esp. when someone asks me a question. This happened at the Big Y recently, when the man behind me asked a question and I just gaped at him.  I finally managed to squeak, “I am disabled. Brain crash. Sorry,” pointing to my cane in the cart. These are my strategies for the holiday and feel free to adopt them, use them, and apply them to Christmas as well.

1.  I am going to ask my sweetie to motor over to Trader Joe’s and buy: a turkey breast, already stuffed with cranberry stuffing. I have done this in the past and it works well.

2. Also available at Trader Joe’s are: gravy, mashed potatoes, and mashed butternut squash. I might be able to cook something, but there is no guarantee. This is hard when you are a foodie and a gourmet cook. Already prepared food is not what I do, but this holiday, I shall!

3. I am going to order a centerpiece from Nuttleman’s florist for the holiday, because going out and gathering grasses and leaves to put in one of my homegrown pumpkins just ain’t gonna happen. Don’t have the spoons for it. Although who’s to stop you from gathering some pretty weeds and grasses by the roadside, tying them up with a red ribbon, and putting them in the center of your table?

4. I will ask guests to bring cider and wine, something decent, please not that cheap wine which my mom (who knew nothing about wine and drank rarely except on rare occasions when she had too much sherry and sang bawdy limerics), had me pour out before one Thanksgiving. She cautioned me, “Annie, don’t fill it too full. We want to have the full bouquet.” She must have read about bouquets in a magazine.

5.  Then I will remind people who are coming for the feast that I have a chronic illness and can only do about 3 hours max with people, although that is a stretch. I’d like to say, 1 and ½ hours, but if they have driven 4 hours to come to my house, I think that a bit shabby. (And this is why, friends, you see me and Rick making a beeline for the door after church, because I am out of spoons and have to go home. Pronto. So sorry to miss the chat and the coffee hour.)

6. I will ask others to do the cleanup and go rest on the couch—guiltily, maybe calling out occasionally, “Hope there is not too much work in there?” to which my spouse will sound annoyed but sympathetic when he says, “Don’t worry, babe, it’s all under control!” How can anything be under control if I’m not there to oversee everything and make helpful suggestions?

7. I might even trail upstairs for a short nap afterwards, murmuring, “Need to lie down for a while, sorry, back down soon. Ish.”

So, this is Thanksgiving at a Spoonie’s house: sending out for food, buying things online, roping people in to do most of the work, and then resting. This is very hard to do when we are used to doing so much, creating many lovely dishes, and sitting down for empathetic conversations with people. Here’s a tip for conversations when you are a Spoonie: When I was going through chemo, I would tell the lovely folks who came to visit, “When I tap you on the knee, it means it’s time to go.” It’s hard to ask for things, isn’t it? And to tell people to leave? Awful. So I invented a signal which has stood me in good stead for years. I still use it, although some people—and I name no names—are deaf to my signals of coughing, blowing my nose, sighing loudly, and fidgeting in my seat, perhaps pulling on the bags beneath my eyes. Often I have to say aloud, “Hey, guys, I am dead and gotta go. It’s been real.”

Alright, enough about chronic illness for a while, although as we all know, it is always always always there in the back of your mind. Can I make it through this meeting? Can I do more than 2 events in one day? How to show up for people I love when I feel dreadful? Do people get it that I adore them but just can’t meet them for coffee or dinner?

The other thing I want to share here is my practice of gratitude, because this holiday is all about giving thanks—seeing the blessings in our lives—telling people how much they bless us—and thanking God for being alive and on this earth. And the very practice of gratitude, research has shown time and time again, makes us forget our troubles and pains; acts as a healing balm on the not-so-good parts of our lives.

‘Course I am also Catholic, besides being here at the UCC, so some of these rituals may seem odd and a trifle Popish.

1.  Before eating, I always cross myself and say, “In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost.” You can adapt this to UCC rituals. It reminds me where my food comes from. It centers me in my faith life. Then I try to remember to do it at the end of the meal, again in Thanksgiving for the food I’ve eaten. I learned this when I was at school in Oxford, England years back, when the head of school would say—all of us standing—a blessing and grace before food, and then another blessing at the end of the meal.

2. After breakfast, coffee at hand, I sit on the couch and before doing anything on social media or my iPad, I read the Daily Readings for the day. (I also read them at the end of the day.)  Scripture grounds me. It sets the tone for the day, even if it turns out to be a not-great day. Often I will peruse Scripture in the necessary room, where I have 1 of 3 booklets of Scripture.

3  I send up a short prayer, which might be a crabby fragment of conversation—“So God,” as Annie Lamott would say, “is it too much skin off your nose for this to be a good day?” Just talking to God about how you really feel, being honest, can be a practice of gratitude.

4. Then I take out my gratitude journal and write in it. The one I use, from Amazon of course, has four boxes to fill in: top left is a line or two from the day’s readings—I usually do a Psalm because I’m lazy and my handwriting is awful now–; top right are things I’d like God to help me do better in, such as being frugal, a constant entry for me; bottom left are my Gratitudes, which usually include—my kids, house, beautiful nature outside, my dog, friends, and faith; and on the bottom right is a place to write in the names of people I am currently holding in prayer. All of this centers and grounds me and keeps me from flying off into worry, fretting, and conjuring up horrifying images of our planet in flames. I save that for later.

5. When workmen are not here, I go out onto our flat deck, blessing the carpenters who built it for us, and get some steps in. I usually do between 20-40 laps around the deck, often saying the Jesus prayer:

Jesus Christ, son of the living God, have mercy on me, a sinner.

I say it over and over until it becomes like a song with my footsteps keeping time.

These may or may not appeal to you, but if they do, give them a try.

When Thanksgiving arrives, check your spoon drawer and be sensible about what you can actually accomplish in this day, because we don’t want you lying flat on the floor, breathing heavily, and dizzy as all get out. Remember to say grace before the meal, which will spread your blessing over the mostly beloved faces around your table. Think of it as breath, as ru-ah, the breathing out of the Holy Spirit in the Bible, just as Jesus did when appearing to the disciples and others in the upper room at Pentecost. Think of what Henri Nouwen once said that whenever he saw someone, he saw Christ livingπ in them. That is a good song to hold in your heart as you celebrate and give thanks. Amen.