Thank you, Heavenly Father, for
the narcissism necessary to look upon this bounty of food spread out before us and believe it’s your blessing upon us while countless, faceless others go hungry. Thank you, Lord, for the gift of faith so we can accept without question what we’re told about existence without troubling our minds with the effort of logic and reason. Thank you, God, for making free will optional so we can apply it when we want to praise the recipients of vast good fortune but ignore it to condemn those who’ve failed due to faulty genes; flawed parenting; physical, social or natural calamity. Thank you, Almighty, for cognitive dissonance which allows us to declare Jesus Christ our Lord and Savior while perverting
his teachings to love our enemies, forgive those who trespass against us, become peacemakers, show kindness to strangers, uplift
the downtrodden, and keep our prayers to ourselves. Oh, Supremest of Beings, thank you for acting in Mysterious Ways so we can always explain away every hideous thing that happens in
your creation, even as we harshly punish your creatures among us for the least of crimes and misdemeanors. Thank you, First Mover of All Movement, for giving us a sweet tooth for cheap labor--from slavery to indentured servitude to exploited immigrants to child labor to sweatshops to Third World labor to
minimum-wage earners--so we can look upon our shining city on the hill this day of
Thanksgiving and proclaim, “We built that! Hallelujah!” And finally, thank you, O’ Merciful One, for the great gift of the blind eye we can turn at will to our
hypocrisies and shortcomings. Amen.