At my church’s Thanksgiving Service, we took the opportunity to honor the Native Americans who lived where our church building now stands. Their land was taken from them without compensation.

As part of our presentation, we used a Litany of Thanksgiving written by Native Americans that came from a Thanksgiving Service in Bar Harbor, Maine.  The Native Americans gave thanks for every aspect of the Creation.

Here are my thoughts that I shared with the congregation:

At each worship service, we love to affirm that all are welcome and that all means all.

That same spirit of welcoming all of God’s Creation inspires the words of thanksgiving from Native Americans that we heard this morning.

With them, we give thanks for fish.

With them, we give thanks for plants. Animals. Birds. Rain. And for everything and everyone else in all Creation.

With them, we give thanks for our teachers from all times and places who are reminding us how to live in harmony with each other and with all Creation.

The Indigenous Peoples—the first peoples who called these lands home—are such teachers of harmony. I am thankful for their wisdom.

The harmony that their wisdom teaches is good for all times and places.

From the time of Creation when God saw all that he had made, and it was good. It was very good.

To the time of St. Francis of Assisi who asked all of Creation to lift up their voices and with us sing, “Alleluia! Alleluia”.

To the time and place of our worship today:

—Praising and thanking the Creator from whom all Creation and all Blessings flow.

—Praising and thanking the Creator for all Wisdom that teaches harmony.

—And praising and thanking the Creator that all means all.

In a similar vein, here are my thoughts first published in 2004 in Visions of America, Visions of the Church, at pages 11-17.

I began by discussing the thorny question of who first discovered America.

I settled on Abraham, Moses and Jesus? Why? In their hearts, they were the first to discover the ideal America where all people are blessed, where all pharaohs are challenged to set all people free, and where all hurting people are healed.

Then I discussed the first Americans: the Native Americans, the African-Americans, and the Pilgrims.

About Native Americans I wrote:

Just as there are many ways to answer the question “Who discovered America?”, there are many ways to answer the question “Who were the first Americans?”.

One good way to answer this question is to say, “The Native Americans.” They were the first people to settle North and South America. They migrated to these continents thousands of years before Columbus. So they were indeed the first Americans in terms of chronology.

In many ways, they are also the “first” Americans in the sense of being those people who have struggled mightily. They have known what it means to struggle against invaders who are superior in military power and superior in technology. They have known what it means to struggle for centuries, even as the triumphant invaders treated them with contempt.

And in many ways, they are also the “first” Americans in the sense of being the people who most cherish nature. One reason the Native Americans lost North America to the European invaders was that Native Americans simply could not understand how any one human being could claim to own the land, the forests, the animals, the fish, the water, and the air. From their perspective, these were gifts from God for all to share.

Long before modern Americans saw pictures of the Earth from space and realized that we must protect our little oasis in space—and realized that no national boundaries or property lines divide our world the way God sees it—Native Americans understood such truths.

In this, and in all these other ways, Native Americans were the first Americans.

THINGS TO THINK ABOUT

Who do you think were the first Americans? Why?

Do you praise and thank the Creator from whom all Creation and all Blessings flow? How? Why?

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For related thoughts, please read my blogs “Apollo 8’s Vision of the Good Earth” and “Apollo 11 Raises the Star-Spangled Banner”.