Post Thanksgiving
It’s the close of the Thanksgiving holiday. Our daughters and families are back home. There is an emotional letdown. We are near the end of the leftovers. I am sitting here this morning, fireplace going, fake candles lite (the good ones), my coffee cup just right, my mind wandering. Things are pretty good.
I realize I live in a ‘bubble’. Jeannie and I are post war first borns. Both of us grew up somewhere in the middle class, her the south side of Tulsa, me from the north. We are solidly baby boomers who’s lives have been ‘blessed’. We live in Williamson County just south of Nashville, the wealthiest county in Tennessee. We are in Franklin, where it seems everyone wants to move if they can manage it. That includes actors, other celebrities, music people of all genres.
We had our big meal Thursday after Santa arrived in the Macy’s parade in New York. It is tradition for our family of band geeks to watch the parade each year. Our daughter Micki even marched in it Christmas 1995. Jeannie has assumed the role her mom had of cooking matriarch. She spent several days preparing and cooking for the big meal—she is a good cook. She tries to prepare the favorite dish of everyone—taking into consideration those who can and can’t eat nuts (and as a southern boy, how do you live without pecans?—or ‘pea-cans’ they say deeper south). I know many families don’t have such a matriarch, they go out or order in. We are blessed there too.
As the tryptophan kicked in and family members found their spot on the couch, football came on. My son-in-law, Brian, is a serious Dallas Cowboys fan, so another tradition is the Cowboys. Personally, I will watch football when it’s one of my college teams, OSU, UT (the REAL UT, Texas) or UT—the other one I’ve grown to enjoy. I’m not much for professional football. So, I excused myself, found another tv and watched Spirited again—the Ryan Reynolds, Will Ferrell movie from 2022. It’s an upbeat, entertaining musical with some good theology. Even after many decades of doing good, Will Ferrell, who is ‘on the other side’ still feels at times that he’s unredeemable. (he was Scrooge in his previous life). Don’t we all feel that way at times? Isn’t that the big question behind all religion? Am I unredeemable?
Ryan Reynolds on the other hand, who is still with us ‘on this side of death’ is successful, rich and single—basically an arrogant ass (you just might know one). Ferrell is challenged with the task of redeeming Reynolds who’s not the least interested. Yes, it is an updated version of the 1843 Charles Dickens story, A Christmas Carol—a musical, dancing one. It touts the same message Sunday mornings should—go out there and care, spread some love to a hurting world. I watched it by myself—at least until Dolly, one of our best Tennessee ambassadors, came on at half-time at the Dallas game.
Dallas won big and to celebrate, the leftovers came out. It’s always good when our team wins. (Last evening my cowboys—Oklahoma State, barely squeaked by Brigham Young). Thursday was a good day. I and three of the grands played Wahoo—or murder as we sometimes call it. The marble game in the shape of a cross. As the game progresses it alway gets tense as we knock each other off in the final attempt to get our marbles home. At those moments we could us a sprinkling of love and good will. I made the Wahoo board out of plywood fifty years ago while in seminary where we played the game with a several friends, future Baptist pastors and their wives.
By Saturday morning, everyone was back home. It was just the two of us once more. We decided to go check out Journey to Bethlehem, a new movie. We went at 9 am (who goes to the theater at 9 am?)—we weren’t alone. Unbeknownst to me, it was another musical. Before you jump ship, I thought they did a pretty good job. The license that the screen writers admittedly took with the script was ok with me. It humanized the story of Mary and Joseph, along with each of their families. After all, there was months—nine of them, from being told she would be pregnant until the birth. There is a lot of room for some interesting story there.
From the theater we decided to check out the new Tanger Outlet mall in Antioch (another suburb of Nashville not the middle East). We weren’t the only ones. They did have good traffic control set up for the scores of people there. It was a beautiful day to get out of the house.
The mall is a nice new place. We were impressed. But as I walked the whole mall it was noteworthy that we as Anglo or white people, were in the minority of those shopping as well as those who worked there. During our years here, Nashville has become very diversified population-wise. Multiple cultures from across the globe. Nashville has the largest Kurdish population outside of Kurdistan. We have a large Hispanic community which barely existed when we immigrated from Texas. We’d be hard pressed without them as far as the building trades and landscaping workers with their excellent skills.
It was my first few days at the UT school of social work that I was told I was a white privileged male—in a not so friendly way. I was taken back at first, but it was the truth. White supremacy/dominance has been the rule, not just in America but in the world. The change coming in America in just twenty years scares some white folks. WE will then be the minority.—as it already is globally. The mall reminded me of that yesterday—a preview of what is to come.
My mind wondered back to before our daughters where married when was asking myself what my reaction would be if one of them brought home a guy of color. It wasn’t the color that concerned me nearly as much as culture. Wedding two cultures has some serious challenges, yet certainly not impossible. Now, I wonder how the family would accept one of my grands in a mixed marriage.
That train left the station years ago for the USA. We are a multicultural nation and that racial shift IS coming. Living into it will continue to challenge us but it will be good for us. We can all be a tad like Scrooge at times, particularly when we fear the changes happening all around us. Like Will Ferrell, we can also feel irredeemable—the challenges of living out our faith is never easy.
Thank God, redemption is ours. Journey to Bethlehem, a trip I’ve taken multiple times over my many decades, was given a new twist musically. The humanizing of Mary and Joseph put a tender twist on an old, worn story. It was a THANKSgiving for me once again. I’m grateful my view from the bubble has not blinded me.