welcome, then we should start at our beginnings. But beginnings, like recipes, are rarely as tidy as the index cards make them seem. The Thanksgiving myth, all hospitality and harmony, is more fiction than fact. The reality was harder, more uneven, and far less photogenic. Still, even in that myth, there are ingredients worth keeping, gratitude, gathering, the idea that breaking bread together can be its own small act of hope
Maybe the true inheritance of Thanksgiving isn’t the Pilgrim story at all, but the rhythm of setting the table year after year, choosing to be together even when the world feels unsteady. Because at the table, we tell the real stories. We talk about what we’re thankful for, yes, but also what we want to do better. We share updates, inside jokes, little confessions that wouldn’t fit anywhere else. Around that table, values get passed like serving dishes: empathy, kindness, patience, and the willingness to listen. The table is where we remember how lucky we are, and where we remind each other not to let that luck harden into complacency.
When I think about America, I think about tables like these, some polished and sprawling,
some wobbly and scarred, some folding tables set up in church basements or shelters, where volunteers ladle soup and call strangers “hon.” All of them are part of the same picture, people trying, in whatever way they can, to feed one another. To make the world a little warmer, one plate at a time.
When the meal is over and everyone drifts toward the couch, I’ll pack away leftovers and think about what it means to keep setting this table, to keep trying. Maybe that’s what America is, at its best, the ongoing effort to gather, to make space, to feed one another even when it’s hard. Not because it’s easy or perfect, but because it matters. The table, the Great Experiment itself, only holds if all of us are welcome and active participants.
The founders called it a more perfect union, not a completely perfect one, and maybe that’s the point, the trying, the gathering, the welcoming of guests from everywhere to sit at our big, messy, imperfect American table. Together. With liberty and justice for all.