It's ironic that Thanksgiving Day became a national holiday in the middle of our Civil War. What an affirmation to launch during such a conflagration but many people will have civil wars going on around them or inside them on Thursday, even as they reach for the cranberry sauce.

The official holiday does focus our attention on those blessings we have. It reminds us there is such a thing as giving thanks and to do so collectively as a nation gets us all facing more or less in the same direction, if just for a day. After a divisive presidential election, that's not a bad thing.

For many people, giving thanks involves a prayer, assembling some words that try to scratch beneath the surface of how they feel. The thought of everyone across the United States of America closing their eyes and speaking words of thanks brings a feeling of thankfulness all by itself. As does the thought of everyone in this nation closing their eyes. When our eyes are shut we are blind to differences. Blind to polls that tell us how we feel. Blind to ratings that tell us what we watch. Blind to scales that tell us how much we weigh. Blind to mirrors that reflect only the tiniest sliver of who we really are, scratching the surface of a lifetime.

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You look at yourself in the mirror and you know how much more there is behind your eyes, beneath your skin. Watch yourself say a few words to your reflection and you know how those few words are not even the tip of your autobiographical iceberg. Sometimes we forget how easy it is to look at someone else and judge them on the surface of their appearance and a handful of words, like judging how blue the sky is at midnight.

It's instructive to remember that Thanksgiving Day really originated from a feast day of thanks shared by European colonists and Native Americans, people separated by a chasm of cultural differences that eventually saw the former overwhelm and all but obliterate the latter. For that day, at least, their differences mattered less and their shared humanity mattered more.

When we pray on Thursday, let's close our eyes and when we finish praying and open our eyes let's try looking at the world around us, and the people we share it with, as if our eyes are closed and only our minds and our hearts are open.

Those words were written and published in this space eight years ago, for Thanksgiving Day in 2004, following the bitterly partisan presidential election between President George W. Bush and his Democratic challenger, Senator John F. Kerry. In the wake of Obama v. Romney they seemed, unfortunately, as appropriate heading into our celebration of Thanksgiving this week as they were then.

Pilgrim's progress?

As a nation, we don't seem to have grown closer to one another during the last eight years. We seem, in fact, to have widened various chasms, particularly those involving politics in any degree.

Those leftovers are hard to swallow. We don't need them on Thanksgiving Day or any day.

Partisan politics…

Ready.

Fire.

Aim.

Our national partisan divide now has far more in common with the military definition of “partisan” than the purely political.

I think most of us can readily admit that a partisan is “an adherent or supporter of a person, group, party, or cause, especially a person who shows a biased, emotional allegiance.”

But we also should admit that the military definition fits better than it should: “a member of a party of light or irregular troops engaged in harassing an enemy, especially a member of a guerilla band engaged in fighting or sabotage against an occupying army.”

And we should begin to distance ourselves from those tendencies in our national political life.

I am not optimistic. The anonymous donor-fed Super PACS are just like guerilla bands fighting and sabotaging the truth and any fact-based, honorable debate and discussion of national policy.

Compromise, which is the art and basis of sound governance, is regarded as a heinously grievous political sin, worthy of expulsion from the party. Those willing to open and use their minds, engaging in the craft of statesmanship, are replaced with those who fill their mouths and minds with gasoline, set themselves afire with a match, and throw themselves at the opposition.

At you and me.

Republicans and Democrats.

Why do we burn each other to an inedible, indigestible crisp?

There is much more to feast upon together.

-JKW-