ADMMXXV Retrospective

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And so we bid farewell to the Year of Our Lord 2025. For the Goode household, it was a good year. God gave us many things; all of them helpful, virtually all of them positive. This year was like a good friend telling stories over dinner--often familiar, always enjoyable, and occasionally coming up with something you really didn't expect even after all this time. 

(I somehow took not a single sunset/sunrise photo this year, so instead of the customary burning atmosphere, you get the local ducks. Sorry. I shall do better in 2026.)

ADMMXXIV Retrospective

 And so we bid farewell to the Year of Our Lord 2024. It was an interesting year, a unique year. Dare I say there will never be its like again.

Photo by me. You can't have it unless you ask nicely.

It was not a banner year for the Goode household, but it wasn't the kind that you wince when somebody names, either. 2024 is like that one friend we all have that we don't remember to even think about until he appears across the room at the party and waves. A good fellow, but not very flashy.

So this little retrospective will contain nothing more earth-shattering than normal life. Of course Chesterton would remind us (were he here) that there is nothing less normal than normal life. For is it not in the everyday round of sleep, meals, germs, fellowship, work, and food that immortal souls are forged? So let's work through some areas where God was doing some forging.

Thanksgiving A.D. 2023

 

Oh give thanks to the LORD, for he is good, for his steadfast love endures forever!

Another Thanksgiving is upon us—another riot of food and relatives and small children and mashed potatoes and singing and noise and joy and pie. What shall we do with it all?

We cannot hold onto it. Our minds are not big enough. No brain is spacious and tenacious enough. Try to recall every detail of last year’s Thanksgiving and see how far you get. One fleeting detail—perhaps two—and you’re done. We are locked in time and no matter how often we rattle the cage of memory, no one has a key. All our grasping and clutching for one produces only rage and empty wind.

The Tyranny of Thanksgiving

Why bother?

 

A glance around my Facebook feed this morning produced some sharp contrasts.

There were all the usual suspects, rounded up and smiling: professional family portraits, amateur shots of glowing landscapes, pictures of pies galore. Most were captioned with some permutation of the word “thankful.”

Then there were the others. Quotidian. Candid.

“Just having stress-free cereal and playing Minecraft this morning because it’s what we like to do.”

“I used to try to do all the fixings, but this year I’m just doing what I like.”

“I’m going out for Chinese food.”

“The stress of the turkey fixings is on its last gasp in society. I just don’t care enough to bother anymore.”

“I made my pumpkin pie on Tuesday. Why wait?”

Why wait, indeed? In a society that can have anything at any moment, what value is there in being forced to mark special days off with food and feasting and fellowship? Isn’t it all just a bunch of unnecessary bother and work? And believe me, I know the sort of work Thanksgiving involves. You have to travel. You have to dress up, or clean up, or shut up about politics, or step up and volunteer to make the yeast rolls (even though you have two kids with the sniffles at home). Your mother interrupts your precious day off of school and demands that you hand-peel twenty pounds of damp potatoes. You have to plot and plan how to use the oven for days ahead of schedule—and then it breaks. Why put up with all those demands? Why put up with the tyranny of Thanksgiving expectations—familial, edible, or personal? Can’t we all just sit at home and eat Chinese in peace? 

Thanksgiving 2021

 

How does one assess a year?

Human beings aren’t really built for such a process. Anyone can tell you whether they had a good or a bad day. The memory usually stretches enough to give you an overview of a week or a fortnight. But by the time a month or more rolls around, you have gaps. That terrible breakfast, that bitter conversation, or that excellent glass of beer you had a month ago usually isn’t even a distant memory—it’s dipped over the horizon of your experience for good. Of course, we moderns have cheat codes—smartphone pictures and Facebook reminders and graphs that show us how the company’s bottom line trends. We can manipulate our tools to cover those gaps, to give the illusion of temporal omniscience.

But really, how many events can you place in each month of the last year? Take a minute or two and think about it—really think about it. No phones, diaries, or apps to help you; this one is just between you and your memory. How many can you name? How many can you place in the right season? Month? Date? (The last two weeks don’t count).

How’d you do? Hopefully better than I did. In fifteen solitary minutes of meditation, I came up with merely twelve events that have made a sizable dent in my memory in this trip around the sun. Three hundred and sixty-five days of experience boiled down to a dozen bones of my life.

Of those, only half could I date with ironclad certainty, because they are born from the calendars that measure my existence: the end of my first year teaching (May), the beginning of my second (September), a joyous walk in the snow down Main Street on Christmas evening (December 25^th, of course), the presidential election controversy (November through…February?), and my wife’s birthday. Three more were emotionally significant enough to etch the date firmly—my brother’s wedding (January), a big family reunion in Texas (August), and catching pneumonia and being flat-on-my-back ill for a week (September). The last four are blurrier. For all the cavorting joy of finally ending my nightly penance at WinCo, I had to ask my wife if I’d finished in late August or the beginning of September. I’m pretty sure my sister moved here in late spring—April, perhaps? I thought the Afghanistan debacle was at the end of July, but a quick check of the Googles revealed that it was August instead. And I can’t get any closer on when I finished reading Hilary of Poitiers’s De Trinitate than vaguely summer, in spite of the fact it was a book I’d been intending to read for three years!

No wonder we need a holiday set aside to ponder, review, reclaim, and revisit with others; to count our blessings and look back in gratitude. I’ve been told by others that I have a pretty good memory, and yet of the bare dozen things I can recall of Anno Domini 2021, two of them—Afghanistan and the Presidency—don’t even have anything to do with me directly! And yet I know this year the Goodes have been abundantly blessed.

For the record (my own, as much as anyone else’s) let me name some of them. We’ve got a wonderful marriage that is still wearing some of its newlywed shine even after a year and a half. Though our births probably would have been grimly fatal only half a century ago, we still continue to live without even noticing our mortal flesh most of the time, as only the healthy can do. My job pushing students toward truth is strenuous, fun, and fulfilling. My excess pounds betray the fact that I live in the wealthiest society of all history (and enjoy it, too!) My church and community are godly, flourishing, and stable. There are more books to read than even I could ever get to, and I got to a bunch this year. My family, unto the third and fourth generation, is still present on this green earth to gather around each other—God has not called even one of my extended family home in twenty years. In fact, some of them live so close that we can gather regularly, share in each other’s lives, and dwell in the thankfulness year-round. It is not much of a stretch to say that this year might be the one I look back on as the high point of untroubled happiness in my existence. It’s been the sort of year that people ask what they can pray about for you, and my wife and I glance at each other and come up with something tiny and banal (lost TV remote, say—I would still like to know what happened to that thing) out of sheer embarrassment for how blessed we are!

It makes me a little nervous. Lady Philosophy wisely told Boethius, “Good fortune deceives, but bad fortune enlightens.” I may not be very enlightened after 2021, but I am deeply grateful to the God who gave me all of it, right down to the unhurried breath I snag as I write these words. I may not remember it all, but I thank the One who gave me all of it. I hope that will suffice.

Here’s to the year that has been, dear reader, as well as to the year that is to come (and all that comes with it). May your memories of good days and bad last you until another Thanksgiving rolls around.

Thanksgiving 2018

So apparently I haven’t written a Thanksgiving post since 2015. Maybe I should write more. This would, of course, require me to watch less. I don’t know how many hours of Amazon Prime TV I’ve racked up over this week of break, but if I did know, I would probably be embarrassed...

but still very thankful that that is even an option. I am a member of the very last generation to remember before the internet was an assumption. I recall using card catalogues in libraries, when letters with stamps were still a perfectly normal (and timely) way to contact someone, and when your personal music collection took up a couple of drawers and was only organized by the album. Oh, and cell phones were a brand-new thing.

And now we have—pause and take a brief look around whatever screen you’re reading this on—all this. I can hit a few buttons, click a few more buttons, and whoosh: these thoughts are out there for everyone from my grandmother to the nearest NSA agent to see. The closest my father could get to this at my age was a letter to the editor. Or maybe a chat room, but somehow I doubt he was that technically savvy back in 1990. Now he has a smartphone, along with everyone else—the man who grew up handwriting reports, only from what was available in the school library. My grandkids will hopefully be unable to even think in those terms. “Oh, you want to know the mating season of the Fijian Crested Iguana? No problem.”[1]

If Thanksgiving had an essence,
it would be turkey, mashed potatoes,
and this...

And it’s not just the tech. I have a couple of best friends who love me (even on my surly days), a plethora of family who love me even more (even on my annoying days), and a church with people who make sure I don’t get left at home alone on Thanksgiving—which means more than I would probably ever admit. And there was buttermilk pie. Do you know how hard it is to find buttermilk pie in northern Idaho? (And they gave me leftovers!) We played a mammoth round of Russian Palooka, had a few risqué Bananagrams, sang all sorts of lovely music. As for the rest of life, I have enough money, a job that pays the bills, good health, and more books than I will get read in the next two years, if I’m honest.

Does it get better? Sure. But please God, never let me shovel ingratitude over the blessings of the moment. Happy Thanksgiving, y’all. On to Christmas!

---

[1] March to April. https://www.australiazoo.com.au/our-animals/reptiles/lizards/fijian-crested-iguana. Now you know.

Thanksgiving 2015

Alone. Cold. He sits in a barren, sparse room, hands losing feeling, trying desperately to be interested an ancient classic text on rhetoric assigned over the break. He’s behind—planned to finish it yesterday. His room at the top of the creaky house is below comfortable even for him—a numbing 30 degrees or so. The window leaks icicle air. On a day associated with friends, family, and food, his friends are absent, his family more so—two thousand six hundred and forty-four miles away, to be exact. And he skipped breakfast. His bank account’s low and college (not to mention living) is everlastingly expensive. Throw in the fact that he’s twenty-five and alone in the universe. What has this poor sap to be thankful for? What good is Thanksgiving Day to him?

Providentially, I can answer that question. See, the pathetic figure above, the one might feel a few pangs of sympathy for? He’s me. And the pangs (provided it’s not really just hunger for your aromatic, juicy turkey in the oven) aren’t necessary. Perspective, as the fellow said, is everything.

The first time in the Bible that I can find with the phrase “give thanks” is in Chronicles, where David has written a worship song on the occasion of God coming to be with His people. The Ark of the Covenant has come to Jerusalem. “Give thanks to Jehovah, for He is good, His steadfast love endures forever!” That phrase resounds again, and again, and again—from temple worship to manifold psalms, from the letters of the apostles to the twenty-four elders who everlastingly fall before the face of God. It is a mark of His people and priests that they give thanks. It is also a mark of His enemies that they do not: “…they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened.” Thus Paul in Romans. Thanksgiving, it seems, is a fundamentally Godly activity. Unlike the pagans or the Pelagians, we bring nothing to God. We can claim no due. It is just a gift, all the way down, and we are to be thankful the same way. All—the way—down.

That perspective? Hogwash and humbug. I’m not really alone. I have God. And even though He should be enough, He’s more generous than that. Santa’s got nothing on my Father. I’ve got an invitation to another family’s celebration this afternoon. Some of my friends will be there too. My own family called and said they love me and think of me, even over two thousand miles away. I’m better off financially than most of Africa, and have a solid roof over my head. The temperature is cool, but unlike ninety percent of the world, I like cool. And it’s even closer to where I like it after I randomly found a space heater in the closet this morning. My Father gives like that. As for the money and the relationships—I can thank God for what I expect Him to do, as well as what He’s already done. Think of Abraham. And honestly, the homework will get done. Eventually. I have faith.

God’s love is not measured by our own. It is better than mine. I can take perverse glee in the discomfort and pain of those I love. Worse, I can ignore them entirely. I focus purely on my wants and pains and lusts and various other short-sighted obstacles. Look up, God whispers. Those look big to you, the same way a walnut looks gigantic to an ant. Look beyond to the oak tree. Psalm 1. Isaiah 61. Remember your God, and give thanks. For computers. Turkeys. Wheat thins. Swords. Books. Family. Lots of family. Slippers. Crosses. Beans. Guns. Empty tombs. Board games. Girls. Elephant shrews. Movies. Oatmeal crème pies. Jobs. Magic rings. Last stands. Pizza. Friends. Unexpected adventures. It’s all from Me. The least you can do is thank your Father.

Amen. Thanks to Jehovah, for He is good, His steadfast love endures forever, even unto anno domini MMXV and beyond. For He said in their land they shall possess a double portion; they shall have everlasting joy. Can’t wait to see what I can thank Him for next year!