Thanksgiving Day was great this year in the City of Houston. Last year our family was living in Minnesota and had no idea that we would next celebrate this holiday in Texas. We’re grateful for old friends there and for new friends here. We’re grateful, too, not only for the bounty that we enjoyed yesterday but also for the abundance that surrounds us always. Here’s photographic proof that there was more than one turkey in the house before the feasting on Thursday morning:

As this long holiday weekend continues, let’s write haiku about turkey, gravy boats, pumpkin pie, college football, family awkwardness, or anything else that comes to mind when you think about this quintessentially American holy day. All you need is one verse with five syllables in the first line, seven syllables in the second line, and five syllables in the third line. Here’s the irony that I always ponder as an Episcopal priest who looks across the pond to find his ecclesiastical “mothership” while fully embracing something with grace-filled roots in the Plymouth Colony:

Weren’t the Puritans
thankful to have left behind
the Church of England?