Thanksgiving!

I am reproducing below a short piece, written in the early nineties, on the eve of Thanksgiving Day. This and other inspirational pieces may be found in the collection "Today's Beautiful gem" at http://www.uramamurthy.com/mohan_gems.html Today's Beautiful Gem: `Thanksgiving' I thank the Mother Earth, the Mother of all mothers, for granting us the abundance of her riches-- plentiful harvests, bountiful mineral wealth and energy resources. Let us not be profligate in exploiting and abusing Her generosity. If we respect Her, she will respect our needs. I thank the Mother Earth for enriching our spiritual firmament with spectacular views of sunrise and sunset, of starlit nights, of majestic mountains, of rapid rivers, of deep seas and of changing seasons. My India and My America-- these two corners of the Earth concern me most. Ageless and serene is my India; young and dynamic is my America. The mother of bhArat brought me forth and fed my young mind with Her cradle tales and later teased my curiosity with eternal questions on life and love and on happiness and renunciation. The Spirit of America tempered my winged fancies with solid pragmatism. To me, India and America are like two eyes and two ears, the two pans in the balance of life. They are like the splendour of the day and the contentment of the night. Thank you, my India and thank you, my America! I thank my strict father, my loving mother and affectionate siblings, the playmates of my childhood, friends of my youth and adolescence, as well as peers, colleagues and teachers of later years for sharing their time, their happiness and their wisdom. I am much obliged to you all, thank you, even though saying thanks is never enough. I thank my beautiful spouse for putting up with my erratic and never-failing-to-surprise pattern of life. I am grateful to my children for teaching me patience even if they still suspect I am a mini-tyrant. Of course, I am thankful to all my friends and to all the readers of this column-- from India, from America, and from many other nationalities for instructing me that no man is an island and no view is unique and that life is a kaleidoscope as well as a tapestry of different hues. Thanksgiving Day is a festival of friendship between native Indians and the immigrant pilgrims. Here is a Peublo Indian prayer: "O our mother the Earth, O our father the Sky, your children are we, and with tired backs we bring you gifts that you love. Then weave for us a garment of brightness; may the warp be the white light of morning, may the weft be the red light of the evening, may the fringes be the falling rain, may the border be the standing rainbow. Thus weave for us a a garment of brightness that we may walk fittingly where grass is green, O our mother the Earth, O our father the Sky!" Let us thank the Great Spirit and pray that It lead us from untruth to truth, from darkness to light, from death to immortality, and from here to eternity! Postscript: I also thank all my kOlam friends (many young and a few old) for exciting my curiosity in the design of patterns and paintings. May their joys be multiplied in the life of light and love! Regards! - mOhana