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Thanksgiving: Suffering, hope, opportunity
The meaning of Thanksgiving? Suffering humbles people, making them more open to transformative hopes and opportunities.
The Pilgrims, like millions of immigrants who followed, came to America for religious freedom.
They came to live separate lives but found they had to work with other cultures and faiths just to stay alive in those early, treacherous years nearly 400 years ago.
Their tremendous pain (half died soon after they landed) opened them up to partnering with the nearest Native American tribe (who had themselves been nearly wiped out by a widespread plague).
Their suffering humbled them and the humbling opened them up to something they might not have otherwise tried: learning from each other.
These two very different cultures that would otherwise have been at war, at odds or living separate lives, worked together to survive. Their gratitude for their blessings lead to them giving thanks with that first Thanksgiving feast in 1621, a celebration that was only briefly noted at the time but one that would become much more important centuries late.
They later aligned to fight and ward off adversaries, part of a story that inspired more settlement and made them the…
