"And Bless The Hearts And Hands That Have Prepared It"

Thanksgiving is a good time to reflect on where our food 
comes from, and to whom, besides God, we owe our gratitude.

In thanking and blessing God for the bounty on our Thanksgiving tables, I like a phrase often associated with our prayers of gratitude, the one where we ask God to bless the "hearts and hands" of those who have made the meal possible. 

This is usually noted in reference to the good cooks who roasted the turkey, mashed the potatoes, baked the pies and prepared all of the other delicacies on the table. But Thanksgiving could also be a good time to reflect on even more of the literally thousands of people from near and far who make such feasts possible.

For example, we could thank God for all of the turkey hatchery workers, the farmers who grow the grain for their feed, for all of the poultry feed industry employees, for the growers who raise the birds, the truckers who haul them, the processing plant workers who prepare and package them, the supermarkets who sell them. We could even think of all of the specialized equipment involved, the building materials for turkey houses, the industries that provide paved highways and storage plants and fuel and other forms of energy that are vital to the process.

The same could be said for every item on the table, cranberries from far off places like Wisconsin and Massachusetts, potatoes, originally from Ireland, now grown in places like Maine and Idaho, sweet potatoes, originating in tropical locations in Central and South American and now grown in states like North Carolina and California, fruit products from large plantations all around the world, with labels like Dole, Del Monte and United Fruit Company (now Chiquita). We could likewise remember multitudes of migrant and other hard working farm workers involved in the harvesting of many of our food crops, increasingly replaced wherever possible by fuel guzzling mechanical harvesting equipment used by corporations focused on ever increased profits for their shareholders.

This as only the beginning of what could be some productive food for thought for conversations around Thanksgiving and other meals. Who and where are all of the unimaginable numbers of "hearts and hands" of fellow human beings to whom we will always owe a debt of gratitude?

And if our prayers include some mention of those who are hungry and who are less privileged than we, this would be a good time to add some generosity to our gratitude, as in a gift to organizations like this:

https://donate.mcc.org/cause/relief