A Thanksgiving Celebration in the Garden of Friendship

Happy (Canadian) Thanksgiving, everyone! Today when we celebrate the bounty of the earth, we should also remember to celebrate the many blessings of friendship.

I hope you'll enjoy this seasonal poem written many years ago by a Unitarian Universalist minister named Rev. Max Coots. This version is slightly revised and condensed.

Let us give thanks for a bounty of friends:

For generous friends with hearts and smiles as bright as their blossoms;

For feisty friends as tart as apples;

For continuous friends who, like scallions and cucumbers, keep reminding us that we've had them;

For crotchety friends as sour as rhubarb and as indestructible;

For good-looking friends who are as gorgeous as eggplants and elegant as a row of corn, and for other friends who are as plain as potatoes and as good for you;

For funny friends who are as silly as Brussels sprouts and as amusing as Jerusalem artichokes, and for serious friends who are as complex as cauliflowers and as intricate as onions;

For friends who are as unpretentious as cabbages, as subtle as summer squash, as persistent as parsley, as delightful as dill, as endless as zucchini and who, like parsnips, can be counted on to see us through the winter;

For old friends, nodding like sunflowers in the evening time, and for young friends, coming on as fast as radishes;

For loving friends who wind around us like tendrils and hold us, despite our blights, wilts and witherings;

And finally, for those friends now gone, like gardens past that have been harvested, and who fed us in their times that we might have life today;

For all these friends, and for those friends of whom we have yet to partake, we give thanks.