Suddenly a pause

LITTLE ROCK — EVENTS swirl. In the midst of war and rumors of war, partisan maneuvers and petty debates, the madness stops. It is time to stop, look around, and count our blessings. And there are many. Let us begin by offering thanks for those who have fought for us around the world and still guard us day and night: the armed forces of the United States of America.

This will inevitably be the first Thanksgiving away from home for some young soldier, sailor, airman or Marine. For those far away, the turkey will have an extra flavor, the flavor of home. Like the sound of a Southern accent 10,000 miles from Dixie.

Let us give thanks for the flag they defend. In peacetime, it may take the sight of Old Glory in a foreign land to make the heart beat faster, and remind us of all we have here, and who we still are, and the nation we yet hope to be-a shining light, a city upon a hill.

When war comes, the flags appear like stars in the night. It’s the one thing we can all do: Raise the flag. It says more than we can say ourselves at such a time. The sight of those flags great and small September 11, 2001, cheered and sustained. They sprang up in front of homes and taped to cars and flying atop the rubble at the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. One was planted in that lonely field somewhere in Pennsylvania to honor those Americans who first fought back against this evil-even before the sun had set that day and it still wasn’t clear just who had attacked us.

Let us give thanks for firefighters and police, whom we’ll never see the same way as before that September 11th. Now we see them anew. Just as we see our country, still the land of the free, home of the brave.

IN MANY WAYS Thanksgiving is the most expected of American holidays; it may be the centerpiece of more travel plans than any of the others. Yet it still seems to come abruptly, in the middle of the week. It has the feeling of a surprise despite its being right there on the calendar all along. In that way, it is like grace itself; we count on it, we certainly know it, and yet there is something miraculous and unexpected in its arrival.

The formal celebration of Thanksgiving (“Dad, would you say grace?”) and the rituals that come with the holidays, the hymns and prayers and community services, the Thanksgiving Day parade and the Football Classics . . . all of that would come long after the first Thanksgiving.

But first there was the unvoiced instinct, the beginning of the realization of what precious things we have been given. That stirring within is what remains fresh and untouched, and keeps coming back at the most unscheduled times-in the middle of the week, in the middle of the day, in the middle of our lives, at midpoints like airports and bus stations, and out on the road in the middle of a cold night as we glance up to the stars in their courses. And we shiver with gratitude for all these gifts that are one gift: life itself.

LET US give thanks for all those who make the holiday possible for the rest of us:

For the airline pilots and stewardesses, whom we all see better now. For the exhausted young intern who’ll get his turkey off the steam table in the hospital cafeteria. For tired waitresses and busy phone operators, for harried nurses and emergency crews. For the trucker who’ll order pumpkin pie in the only recognition of the holiday his schedule will allow.

For the hours leading up to Thanksgiving. For the festive anticipation as folks come home for the holiday. You can almost hear the sweetest two words in the language in the rustle of folks waiting for kinfolk at every crowded terminal in the country: Welcome Home!

For the sound of gravel in the drive of many a country place as the old folks await the sound of the familiar car disgorging familiar faces. And maybesome new ones. For the sound of doors opening and children shouting and coats tossed on the furniture and the feel of warm hugs.

For the bustle before the guests arrive, the hubbub of greetings when they do, for the same stories improved on every year, and for the arguments over just exactly when something in the family history happened and why. For the ways in which all families are alike and all families are different.

For friends who make life sweet, who share the good times and bad, and who, because they stick by us, teach us grace.

For the presence of the past around the table-in the faces of the old, in family stories, in old recipes, in the voices of those who taught us the lay of the land.

Let us not fail to give thanks for the Groaning Board-the turkey and dressing, the cranberry sauce and yams, and for pies-pumpkin, of course, and mincemeat and Karo-nut and, in some quarters, sweet potato. And for good appetites. And for fall-beautiful, stunning fall-in Arkansas.

THANK YOU, Lord, for moments of grace that bring us back to ourselves, and to what’s really important. Flying standby in the holiday crush, a businessman lets his eyes stray for a moment from his laptop and the figures he’s got to have done by journey’s end. He looks out and sees as if for the first time the fantastical clouds towering and billowing in the unbelievable, sunlit ocean that is the sky. Down below, hidden from sight but not from the sense of it, there is the earth and the fullness thereof. And he gives thanks.

Thanks for wandering and arriving. For long drives through the nightturning dawn as we head for home at the end of the road. For Arkansas. For country breakfasts and juke boxes and cowboy hats and denim and mamas and papas and young ’uns. For the look of two-lane highways twisting through the Ozarks in the early morning. And for the long black-top road stretching straight ahead forever through the flat, rich green Delta under a huge sky at sunset.

For the names of places. “I have fallen in love with American names/ The sharp names that never get fat,/ The snakeskin titles of mining claims,/ The plumed warbonnet of Medicine Hat/ Tucson and Deadwood and Lost Mule Flat.”-Stephen Vincent Benet.

For Smackover and Bucksnort and Grinder’s Switch, for Wounded Knee and Hot Coffee, Miss., and for the kind of Arkansas names that roll trippingly off the tongue, making a poem of the roadmap:

For Pine Bluff and Flippin and Delight. For Little Rock and Big Rock Township, for Natural Steps and Toadsuck Ferry and Pickles Gap. And don’t forget Calico Rock and Snowball and Standard Umstead. Let us give thanks for Friendship, Amity and Romance; for Sweet Home, Welcome, and Needmore; for Evening Shade and Morning Star. Why, Arkansas even has a Ralph, Waldo and Emerson.

For the dark rolling fields of the Republic, this grand continental Republic of smaller, sovereign, distinctive republics each with its own eccentricities. For a Union that can contain both Maine and Mississippi and every variation between those cultures, those ways of life, those languages.

For the sound of the Pledge of Allegiance being said in a chorus of childhood voices, for the same words said in every accent at a citizenship ceremony, and for that ridiculous yet undying hope: liberty and justice for all.

For baseball and jazz and the Constitution and American intricacies of every kind that are nevertheless simple, and so endure. For the great, sweeping American simplicities-like Emily Dickinson’s poems and Joe DiMaggio at bat.

For freedom, whatever the cost, and the strength to fight for it.

We give thanks today for you, Gentle Reader, for whom we report and opine, and for the Providence that still protects us, and has preserved us, sustained us, and let us reach this day together.