At the still point of the turning world. Neither flesh nor fleshless;
Neither from nor towards; at the still point, there the dance is…

T.S. Eliot, “Burnt Norton”

Almost a decade ago,  I enrolled in a college photography class. Not a bucket list kind of thing by most standards, but it was something I had been meaning to do for over thirty years, but had never been able to make time for it, too busy being busy and bemoaning the pace of life as a woman trying to play equally well the roles of mother, wife, daughter, sister, best friend, teacher. At the same time, I had also been waiting for Tom Petty to show up on my doorstep and beg me to be one of his Heartbreakers.

My friend signed up with me, and like a couple of teenagers, we competed for an “A” from our photography teacher, a badass with a Nikon. Like me, she was dealing with breast cancer with neither time nor patience for pink ribbons. Less technician than artist, she had a penchant for Photoshop and its post-processing capabilities that she knew would made us look competent.  Her dead-pan dead-on sense of what was important inspired me to do my homework and never to miss a class. Bristling at our predictable photographs shot unacceptably straight-on, she would remind us, with a sigh, that “photography is just light.” It was just light, and we just needed to find it and appreciate it when we did. Photography was “writing with light.”

I wanted to find that light, to be the photographer with the magic Amyn Nasser describes as

I believe in the photographer’s magic. He has the ability to stir the soul with light and shape and color. To create grand visual moments out of small and simple things, and to infuse big and complicated subjects with unpretentious elegance. He respects classic disciplines, while at the same time insists on being fast, modern, and wild.

Believing in us the way good teachers do, she assigned as homework the week of Thanksgiving, a “prepositional scavenger hunt” requiring us to shoot from various angles – against, across, beyond, beneath, around, behind, below, between, inside, outside, on top of, toward, through, upon . . .

So it was that on Thanksgiving afternoon, I found myself wandering the grounds of the Arizona State Capitol, eventually stopping beneath a canopy of shimmering green and pink.

I have no idea how long I sat in the shade of those trees, looking skyward and thinking, but it was long enough for prepositions and perspectives to give way to gratitude and grace –  Amazing Grace –  and thoughts of Van Morrison in full flow at The Hollywood Bowl, mystifying me the way he used to do before he became dangerous, denying the COVID-19-pandemic that has left so many families grieving the loss of loved ones again this Thanksgiving, contradicting doctors, and protesting the protocols that prevented him from performing where and when he wanted to and making people sick in the process.

I prefer to think of Van Morrison as the man behind the music that is the soundtrack of my youth, the soundtrack of Kenneth Branagh’s Belfast  – the city that made him in the place that made me.  I prefer to think of him – on Thanksgiving – as the man behind the beautiful Astral Weeks/I Believe I have Transcended, a song he once described as “one where you can see the light at the end of the tunnel.”

For the day that’s in it, Thanksgiving has something to do with wherever you find that moment of transcendence. Among those desert trees that afternoon, looking up and losing track of time, I saw the light, I suppose, and the kind of gratitude Annie Lamott once described in her Help, Thanks, Wow: The Three Essential Prayers:

Thanks is the prayer of relief that help was on the way, that either the cavalry arrived, or that the plates of the earth shifted and that somehow, you got your sense of humor back, or you avoided the car that was right in front of you that you looked about to hit. And so it could be the pettiest, dumbest thing, but it could also be that you get the phone call that the diagnosis was much, much, much better than you had been fearing. And you say the full prayer, and its entirety, is: Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you.

But for reasons of brevity, I just refer to it as Thanks. It’s amazement and relief that you caught a break, that your family caught a break, that you didn’t have any reason to believe that things were really going to be OK, and then they were and you just can’t help but say thank you.

Thank you – a powerful phrase that often goes unsaid right when we need to hear it the most.

Although the celebration of the holiday does not come naturally to me, even after living an American life for over thirty years – and now living in an ex-pat village in Mexico where, yes, I will have turkey later. Some of my friends are still surprised when I tell them there is no such holiday in Ireland and that Christmas is the holiday that warms us.  I can relate to Carole Coleman, an Irish woman living in Washington D.C. when she apologizes to her American family and friends:

. . . we will be doing the turkey thing all over again five weeks from now.

Last year, Rabbi Bentzy Stolik told his congregation in Olney, Md, to start each day by getting “on the treadmill of gratitude.” The pandemic forced us to reconsider and replace all our known ways with new routines and rituals. It has also inspired new reasons – reminders – to be thankful – for all the people, places, and things we took for granted and swear we’ll never make the same mistake again. Hugs. Handshakes. Hanging out. Happy hour. 

Keeping it Irish, I’ll leave you with this lovely minute or two from the film, “Waking Ned Devine.” The hapless Lottery official has just arrived unannounced at Ned Devine’s funeral, just as  Jackie O’Shea is beginning the eulogy.  Always quick on his feet – and realizing his scheme to cash in on Ned’s winning lottery ticket is about to come crashing down – Jackie pauses. He looks over at his best friend, Michael O’Sullivan, who is posing as Ned, and as an easy smile spreads across his face, he looks out into the congregation and delivers this:

As we look back on the life of . . .

Michael O’Sullivan was my great friend. But I don’t ever remember telling him that. The words that are spoken at a funeral are spoken too late for the man who is dead. What a wonderful thing it would be to visit your own funeral. To sit at the front and hear what was said, maybe say a few things yourself. Michael and I grew old together. But at times, when we laughed, we grew young. If he was here now, if he could hear what I say, I’d congratulate him on being a great man, and thank him for being a friend.

Thank you, my friends.

Happy Thanksgiving to you and yours.

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