Put down your forks for a moment, everyone. Jenny: stop fidgeting. We need to reflect on what it is to give thanks.
Consider the origin of these words: We think, have thoughts. To thank is to think grateful thoughts.
Thanks may be expressed diversely, or not at all. Gratitude may be understood.
To be held in gratitude is to be in a state of grace.
Let's begin at the beginning. A child at birth likely doesn't feel gratitude for the process. Her first cry is probably a protest. His first smiles probably reflect a process of elimination.
But a child enters a state of grace, for he is the object of a parent's gratitude. She is loved, and her first thanksgiving, most of the time, is at her mother's breast.
Right away we must pause and acknowledge that from those first moments paths diverge, fortunes differ. Through the life that follows, some will have more to be thankful for than others.
There will be losses and disappointments.
Hunger and disease, poverty and violence will not merit much gratitude.
But even in miserable lives there may be small mercies. Gratitude can flicker weakly through the pain and sorrow in the faces of those given nourishment, care or refuge.
Now let's move along paths that, we hope, will be more familiar. It's in childhood when gratitude becomes recognized.
Children learn quickly that gifts are to be received with thanks if they are to keep coming. Don't they, Jenny?
They will be thankful for the security and comforts that a home provides. They will be grateful for friends they make, particularly those who stand up for them when bullied by others.
If they get a good mark on an exam or score a goal on the soccer pitch, they will feel pride in their own achievement but feel warmth for the teacher or coach behind it.
They will become aware of their geographical place and may write it so: Street, town, province, country, continent, world and universe.
Some lucky children will find wonder in nature and happiness in a puddle or pile of leaves and not know, quite, who to thank for it. Even luckier ones will discover who to thank, because they find God there and begin a lasting communion.
Next we come to the stage where a boy starts to become a man and a girl a woman - a time when shoulders prepare to be squared, when bosoms prepare to heave.
It's a time of changing contours to the hum of rising hormones and the clatter of descending testicles. Don't interrupt, Jenny.
It's a time when pushing and shoving give way to gentler embrace - to voiceless stammers of gratitude.
For those who enter adulthood and progress through it and prosper, giving thanks becomes less urgent. He might regard himself as a self-made man. She, plucking shards of ceiling glass from her hair, might regard herself with equal value.
Even if they have few to thank besides themselves, they're pedalling along on life's cycle. The chances are that they will create new life and be thankful, and favour it with grace, or pass it on from Higher Authority.
It should be apparent by now that a life well lived is a gracious act itself, a gratuity, and that those living it so are giving thanks.
And eventually, the circle closes and helplessness mounts, the dependency of childhood is revisited. It's harder to be thankful when discomforts accumulate, bones break or organs fail.
It's harder to remember to give thanks when memory is lost.
We all hope to have those who love us around to the end, giving us comfort that we crave, performing a task that becomes ever more thankless, but for which no thanks are required.
Some will hope to be equipoised for oblivion, some for a life hereafter; ready for their state of grace to be withdrawn or fixed for all eternity.
As thanks can be given for a life, thanks can be given for its ending.
That's all I have to say. Let's enjoy what's before us. Jenny: stop making a face. Turnips are good for you.
Like so much in life.
