Cohousing-L Mailing List: Let Us Give Thanks By Max Coots - (Joani and Neil's reading)

[Neil Planchon (neil]

For many many years Joani and I read Let Us Give Thanks By Max Coots at Swan's 
Market Cohousing thanksgiving gatherings.  This year, instead of Joani, her 
daughter Amika read it with me with the assistance of another neighbor.  And 
this year, with open and tender heart, as I’ve done before, I am sharing the 
reading with you all!  Here you are:

Let Us Give Thanks By Max Coots
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

Let us give thanks for a bounty of people:

For children who are our second planting, and, though they grow like weeds and 
the wind too soon blows them away, may they forgive us our cultivation and 
fondly remember where their roots are.

Let us give thanks:

For generous friends…with hearts as big as hubbards and smiles as bright as 
their blossoms;

For feisty friends as tart as apples;

For continuous friends, who, like scallions and cucumbers, keep reminding us we 
had them;

For crotchety friends, as sour as rhubarb and as indestructible;

For handsome friends, who are as gorgeous as eggplants and as elegant as a row 
of corn — and the others — as plain as potatoes, and so good for you.
For funny friends, who are as silly as brussels sprouts and as amusing as 
Jerusalem artichokes, and serious friends as complex as cauliflowers and as 
intricate as onions;

For friends as unpretentious as cabbages, as subtle as summer squash, as 
persistent as parsley, as delightful as dill, as endless as zucchini, and who — 
like parsnips — can be counted on to see you through the long winter;

For old friends, nodding like sunflowers in the evening-time, and young friends 
coming on as fast as radishes;

For loving friends, who wind around us like tendrils, and hold us despite our 
blights, wilts, and witherings;

And finally, for those friends now gone, like gardens past, that have been 
harvested — but who fed us in their times that we might have life thereafter;

For all these we give thanks.

Source: the late Rev. Max Coots, who was Minister Emeritus of the Unitarian 
Universalist Church in Canton, New York. His passion for gardening yielded this 
beloved and much used meditation.

-=-=-


May you be well and may you have a marvelous Thanksgiving!
Neil (and Joani in spirit) 
Swan's Market Cohousing, Oakland CA