LEFTOVERS
A Widow Bit – Nov. 27, 2009
By Mary Koch

            Last week I bought tickets to attend plays at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival in October 2010, eleven months into the future. Folly or faith, I wondered, as I typed my credit card number into the computer for an Internet order.

            One of my favorite authors, Anne Lamott, advises: “If you want to make God laugh, tell her your plans.”

            Who knows what my circumstances, or anybody’s circumstances, will be in eleven months, eleven days or even eleven hours? Years ago my husband observed, “Nothing is forever,” and then proved it. Nothing is forever in this life, at least.

            We can deny the possibility of change, which I did for many years. It never occurred to me that life would do anything but move along in the direction I chose to set. Then I learned that the compass of our lives can go whacky. Everything can change in a mere moment, with one breath, or one last breath.

            I no longer deny the inevitability of change; I just play the odds. There was a time when I rarely gambled, would not dream of playing cards for real money, but life has turned me into a gambler.  Odds are pretty good that I’ll make the trip to Oregon eleven months from now. Odds are against my seeing the plays I want to see unless I buy tickets far in advance.

            I went through the same process a couple months ago when I started thinking about visiting my brother and his wife in North Carolina for Thanksgiving. I wandered through Internet sites, pricing air fares. Before I knew it, I was punching in those credit card numbers to buy a ticket, betting against the weather in the Cascade Mountains. I got stuck on the wrong side of the pass twice last winter. Remembering that, I decided to hedge my bet and bought traveler’s insurance to reimburse the price of my plane ticket in case the passes proved impassable.

            I should have stuck with faith. The drive to the airport proved to be easy and buying the insurance, folly.

            Thanksgiving is a mixed celebration of faith and folly. There was the indomitable faith of the Pilgrims. And in our own acts of saying thank you, we acknowledge that the abundance in our lives comes only through God’s grace. It is faith, not labor, that enriches us. The folly – well, while our follies are obvious on this holiday weekend, I’ll forego moralizing. Each of us is capable of identifying our own.

            The original Thanksgiving celebrations were a combination of feast and fast. The day or two before Thanksgiving, the Pilgrims fasted to prepare both spiritually and physically for the feast. Sometimes they even fasted after the feast.

            Given our appetite for Thanksgiving leftovers, which are considered by many as better than the original meal itself, odds are against much fasting this weekend. It would be folly to imagine otherwise.