Published: November 2007
November 14th’s multifaith Thanksgiving celebration in the Heights Room incorporated prayers and readings from the Baha’i, Buddhist, Christian, Islamic, and Jewish traditions. “The program is virtually the only time we come together as an interfaith community,” according to Rev. Howard McLendon of Campus Ministry, who organized the second annual Thanksgiving event. “We tried to make it a welcoming and affirming experience for all of our faith traditions.” Historical interpreter and former dean D. Michael Ryan ’67, MA’88, began the program, portraying John Hancock reading the October 3, 1789 “Proclamation of Thanksgiving and Prayer,” issued by President George Washington. Other program participants were Joseph Appleyard, SJ, vice president for University Mission and Ministry; Mansoor Ahmed ’09; Rebecca Rowley, director of the Center for Responsible Leadership, Leadership for Change; Matthew Porter ’08; James Erps, SJ, director of Campus Ministry; Rabbi Ruth Langer, associate director of the Center for Christian-Jewish Learning; Michael J. Cotter ’08; and Rev. Judith Stuart, Episcopal affiliate campus minister. Carlisa Brown, development’s associate director for leadership gifts, and area musician Hobert Yates performed “Run ‘Til I Finish,” by Smokie Norful.
Above, seated at the gathering, are (left) Fuzieh Jallow ’07 and (far right) Matthew T. Ryan ’07, WCAS’08, who presented invited reflections entitled “For This We Are Grateful.” Also speaking was Boston College Magazine editor Ben Birnbaum, who offered the following reflection:
I want to speak today about my gratitude for communion: for the Boston College community, of which I’ve been a member for 29 years; for the robust, fractious tribe of my five brothers and my sister; for the communion of my grown children, who are a pleasure to be with, mostly; for my 30-year marriage to Diane; for the shoebox of a neighborhood synagogue that stood in the remote, ungentrifiable district of Brooklyn in which I was raised; for the educational institutions that have taken me in and, in some cases, washed me out; for the company of fellow workers.
Judaism, the tea in which I’ve steeped for 60 years, is a faith that holds the highest regard for sages. And I am grateful as well for the communion of the sages, those men and women who are always present to me, and whose words and deeds offer wisdom and delight—and solace.
Sappho, the Greek poetess who tells me “What cannot be said, will get wept.”
Samuel Johnson, who, when asked to offer a toast while “in company with some very grave men at Oxford,” says Boswell, raised his glass and called out “Here’s to the next insurrection of the Negroes in the West Indies” and likely forever forfeited any further chance to fill his belly at that high table.
William James, who in his mid-twenties hauled himself out of a paralyzing sadness by willing: “My first act of free will shall be to believe in free will.”
The 20th-century poet Czeslaw Milosz, who wrote movingly about his Catholic faith for decades and then late in life wrote, even more movingly, “Why not concede that I have not progressed, in my religion, past the Book of Job?
The 17th-century Japanese master of haiku Matsuo Basho, who explains myself to me daily with “Even in Kyoto, hearing the cuckoo’s cry, I long for Kyoto.”
Montaigne, who has been with me at ten thousand administrative meetings, because he says: “No man is immune from saying foolish things; the real misfortune is to say them painstakingly.”
And a final ghost, from my own tradition. Menachem Mendel of Kotzk, the early-19th century Chasidic master, explicating Genesis and more to his followers (and me, at a distance), said, “God’s curse of the serpent was to make him crawl forever on his belly and eat dust. Is that a curse, never to be hungry? Yes, a terrible curse.”
For the undying company of this communion, I am grateful.