What I'm thankful for this year

One of my recurring rituals in writing this column is to devote the column before Thanksgiving to a list of people, animals, or things that we ought to give thanks for but don't -- or at least don't appreciate enough. As always I encourage you to send me your choices for the Thankful List.

------

This Thanksgiving I am thankful for the people who pick strawberries.

I live in LA now and I often drive north on the 101 to get to some place that usually has what I could buy right near my house, but I like driving and I like seeing the endless fields of strawberries in the Conejo Valley. Apparently this area produces most of the strawberries most of the people in most of the country eat. Although the peak strawberry season is in the spring there always seem to be workers in one field or another toiling away. There are no machines that can harvest strawberries without mushing them, so strawberries still must be picked by human hands and a bent body. The same is true for grapes, and it is that back breaking toil that moves my soul to grateful thanks. We are so used to seeing containers of strawberries in the supermarkets all year long. They were once fruits of the nobility, too expensive for common folk, and now they are there for us all. Thank you, God, for all the people who toil in the fields and are invisible to us. Let us praise them through the bitter-sweetness of their work.

------

This Thanksgiving I am thankful for the Grand Canyon.

I am embarrassed to say that as I push 70 years of age I had never seen the Grand Canyon -- until a few days ago when Betty and I travelled there with some friends. It was a perfect day. The air was clear and the sky bright and blue. We stood on the south rim of the Canyon and I was stunned and silenced by its size and magnificence. Honestly, I was not prepared to be so moved by a big hole in the ground. My first thought was to wish that every atheist in the world was standing next to me looking out over this canyon that is so manifestly also a creation. I would quote to them the words attributed to Albert Einstein when he was asked if he believed in God and he said, "Look at the universe. Could so great a symphony have no conductor?"

I am sure that people who also stood on the south rim but who do not believe in God were also deeply moved, but seeing such massive beauty as just a canyon seems inadequate. That canyon is clearly a creation. Then I would quote to them the words of the psalmist in Psalm 19 that I spoke into the canyon's breeze:

"The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament sheweth his handywork. Day unto day uttereth speech, and night unto night sheweth knowledge. There is no speech nor language, where their voice is not heard. Their line is gone out through all the earth, and their words to the end of the world."

------

This Thanksgiving I am thankful for squirrels.

OK, I know you are thinking -- with good reason -- "Gellman has lost his mind." Squirrels are just furry rats to some folks, and because many of them are rabid, they are a real health hazard. Most of the places in the country that love squirrels, love them for their meat. Nevertheless I love squirrels and I am thankful for squirrels because they bury nuts for the winter. I think that the combined wisdom of economists today about our economic ills can be boiled down to that principal bit of squirrel wisdom -- we do not bury enough nuts. We simply do not save enough.

Squirrels teach us to sacrifice not for what we want but for what we will want when and if the hard times hit. I know that for many people, the paycheck does not cover the price of all our nuts now. The thought of putting away some of those nuts for a later day is a laughable fantasy. I know. However on this day I embrace the fantasy that is being taught to me at this moment by the squirrel outside my window. Bury nuts for the winter. What is hard now will be impossible then.

So remember, God created squirrels too and God said, "It was good." I know Genesis does not say specifically that squirrels were good, but they are included in all the creations of day six which was, let me remind you, the same day we were created, so there! I am thankful for squirrels.

( Send QUESTIONS ONLY to The God Squad via email at godsquadquestion@aol.com.)