North Star Writers Group

Too many people, however - in this country and around the world - have valid reasons to feel less than thankful. Not because they are ungrateful or selfish or uncaring, but because their lives are extremely difficult, bordering on the impossible. Just surviving another day is a triumph for these souls.

Witness the embattled people of Darfur, whose families are slaughtered by militias in league with their own government (Sudan) while the world makes appropriate clucking noises but does nothing substantial to stop the massacre.

In Iraq, where blood literally is running in the streets, people face out-of-control mayhem in a war they neither asked for nor did anything to merit other than suffer under a brutal dictator who used to enjoy U.S. backing. The same Donald Rumsfeld who shook Saddam Hussein’s hand in 1983 was the Secretary of Defense bumbling his way through the U.S. invasion of Iraq launched two decades later.

There are my beleaguered fellow Americans, trapped in inner cities that have been overrun by gangs, guns, drugs, violence and pollution, and written off by politicians, the courts, the police and all those who believe that if we are poor, it’s entirely our own fault.

Others of my fellow citizens work at two or more jobs with no healthcare benefits to feed their families while unable to afford health insurance and not qualifying for Medicaid. Their numbers are climbing and they are but one health crisis away from the street.

Then there are the souls on the street, lost to mental illness, family violence, drug addiction or other dire situations. There might be more money to help these people reclaim their lives were we not throwing away borrowed dollars into the sands of Iraq and into the greedy hands of uninvestigated war profiteers.

Our policies and priorities are so out of kilter. If this is a Christian nation, how did we come to obsess about gay marriage or abortion? Jesus had nothing to say on either of those topics but admonished his followers frequently about helping those less fortunate - those without much of a reason to be thankful.

I encountered one person in the parking lot of a 7-Eleven in East Dallas. I passed her going into the store. She was slumped against the wall, her clothes torn and soiled, her greasy hair matted and tangled. The glazed look of despair in her eyes burned a hole in my soul.

On my way back to my car, I stopped to give her a $10.00 bill. She responded as though someone had just handed her the keys to the kingdom.

Her eyes welled with tears. She grabbed my hand, thanked me repeatedly, and then blurted out the story of her life. As I listened, it occurred to me that none of us sets out to become homeless, or drug addicted, or a prostitute or a thief. Somewhere and for some reason(s) we lose our way, and with it the hope that makes it possible for us to feel thankful.

The irony is that very often those with the least are the most grateful. Having nothing, they take nothing for granted and even a small amount of money or a few minutes of attention from another human being becomes a priceless gift.

Along with so many others, I will eat more than my fair share of Thanksgiving dinner and cheer on my favorite football team. Always in my heart, however, will be those whose lives lack the blessings I enjoy but who nonetheless find reasons to be thankful.

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This is Column #CT10. Request permission to publish here.