I have just come back into the house from cutting the last of the roses that are still blooming, the sage I will need to make the dressing on Thanksgiving day, the cilantro that won’t survive the first real freeze heading our way. Later this evening, some of our oldest, dearest friends will arrive for a couple of days and after that, it will be two other friends; if all continues as things are right now, they will bring our daughter.

This year, Thanksgiving has a new meaning for me. We’ve worked the land this year, and continue to feast from its bounty—last night we had broccoli and carrots from our garden, there’s a big cabbage and turnips and turnip greens for the days ahead. Earlier this morning, I heard an incredible racket out in the chicken coop and was blessed to open the nest boxes to find two eggs: one, a perfect light green egg, the other, a little smaller, of an equally stunning pink-brown hue. I have cans of our produce in my pantry and freezer, so this place I call home now has roots I have never experienced before.

Reflecting on my life these days pushed me to go back and look at pictures of this year and after a long time without doing any of my little videos, I realized I had one taking shape so I worked on it between gardening, doing my chicken work, making soup and writing a sermon.

I will spend most of the afternoon on the translation project that I am about to wrap up, maybe as early as next weekend. That project keeps me connected to a far bigger world than my own and ways of looking at the world very different than mine. On Monday, I have to officiate at another Pauper’s funeral, a bleak reminder of the depth of brokenness and need for redemption in the world. A clergy woman and writer I respect enormously, MaryAnn McKibben Dana keeps me learning about “the theology of improvisation” and as we find our way into Thanksgiving, what I am most grateful for is the God who continues to dwell in this most broken of worlds and says to us in the midst of even of horror, “yes, and….”