Giving Thanks for Thanksgivings that Never Were
Russ and Amy Jacks Dean, November 18, 2001
Community Thanksgiving Service
Avondale Presbyterian Church, Charlotte, North Carolina
AMY: I will never forget the trip to Louisville, KY in the spring of 1988. We were preparing for our entrance into The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary that fall, and we were going to check things out – primarily job possibilities and housing. They showed us the dorm housing. We smiled and said “Nice,” which meant “No.” Then they showed us Springdale Apartments – right on campus, fairly new, decent size – altogether pretty nice. I felt good about that housing possibility – along with every other married student who would be entering seminary in a few months – not much availability. Then they took us to Seminary Village (which we would later learn is just called “The Village.”) I will never forget the sight of that apartment. We had been warned that they were undergoing “improvements” and that this apartment that we would see was a work-in-progress. Paint had been scraped and the dust and shavings were piled in the middle of the floor. The windows were open to let the cool breeze blow through and paint fumes out – natural air conditioning. And in the bathroom, the toilet sat tilted in the bathtub. My prayer in that moment was “God, please don’t ever make me live here!”
RUSS: I will never forget promising my young wife that we would NEVER have to live in Seminary Village. It had been a long trip for two small-town kids who had hardly been out of Laurens County, South Carolina: through the Piedmont of Carolina and the Tennessee mountains, into the hills of Kentucky and through the Bluegrass all the way to the big city. We visited the campus of the “Mother Seminary” of Baptist schools. We toured the library. We met with admissions. But it seems like we spent most of that entire trip, standing in the bathroom of that slum apartment, looking at that toilet perched in the tub.
I never considered renting there. There was one small room for living. One small bedroom. One very small kitchen. And, there was the bathroom! That night at the Howard Johnson’s on Shelbyville Road, we pulled up the covers, and as I turned out the light I comforted my bride -- the one who had never intended to live anywhere but A.B. Jacks Road, in Clinton, South Carolina. As she softly cried, I put her to sleep with my assurance. “I promise we will never live in Seminary Village.”
AMY: I will never forget the day, several months later, when we backed the rented Ryder truck to the door of T-6 in – you guessed it - “The Village.” All of our worldly possessions, that would fit in the tiny apartment, were packed into this yellow truck. A few new neighborly students came to help us unload our “Early Attic” décor – the sofa and loveseat that my brother and sister-in-law had given us in their remodeling project, the piece of carpet that my sister and brother-in-law had just torn out of their den in their remodeling project. A table and 4 chairs, our computer, a bed and dresser, and a wedding gift piano from Russ’ parents – the only new thing we owned that wasn’t packed away in boxes in my parent’s basement!
RUSS: I will never forget the smell of the village, which will forever remind us of a market in Calcutta or New Delhi, because from the parking lot, you had to pass by Sheila’s apartment, there on the end, to get to T-6. Her air condition was always running, spewing the pungent smell of curry and other Indian spices into the courtyard. I will never forget the feel of those sidewalks, and the stepping-stones connecting the apartments. The pressure of roots, rising in defiance of age and gravity, had caused the sidewalks to buckle and crack, and the cement stones to be uneven and mis-matched. We had a cadence memorized from T-6 to T-2: step, step, short hop, step, step, step, jump, step, step. I will never forget the sound of the village. It was the sound of children and of bicycles, hundreds of bicycles. Our circle: the “S,” “T,” “U,” and “V” apartments, was fairly child-free. But across campus, the apartments adjacent to the railroad tracks, and known as “diaper row,” supplied enough kids, and enough noise, for the whole village alphabet. The smell and sound and feel of that wonderful home will surely die with me.
AMY: I will never forget the friends we made in “The Village.” We could not be separated. We were known as “The Commune.” James and Amy lived above us and David and Beth lived next door to us. Ours was the center abode, and therefore, the hub of the hub-bub. We ate meals together – my memory says almost daily, though in reality probably not that often, but often enough that the ritual was – bring your own meat for the grill and I’ve got potatoes, you got any salad, how about dessert? And the rule was that each couple brought their own plates, utensils and glasses to be taken home with them dirty – of course no dishwashers and not enough room in the pitiful kitchen to stack that many dishes. James made the best onion rings and Beth was known for her baked potato sauce that was unbelievably rich and fattening. Fall favorites were the other Amy’s pumpkin soup baked right in the pumpkin and together the 2 Amy’s perfected the apple dumpling dessert. My greatest fear is that we’ll never have friends like that again.
RUSS: I will never forget all the plans we had made. We had already planned that our reunions, an annual gathering of “The Commune” would take place at Thanksgiving. The first few years we would gather to share all the excitement of the new positions to which we would have been called. Later years our kids would play together. And later, maybe they would even go to college together. Maybe they would even gather in their own “communes” at seminary.
AMY: I will never forget the day we returned to “The Village” after a summer away that I saw the look on Amy’s face, and I knew something was wrong. I’m sorry I ever asked her, because on that day when she said that she and James were having marital problems, I knew things would never be the same.
RUSS: And we knew that our Thanksgivings had been forgotten.
AMY: Even before we had celebrated the very first time.
RUSS: In the opening chapter of Paul’s letter to the church at Rome, he hopes aloud (in writing) that one day he might come to join them. Someone else had first preached the gospel to them, but Paul had heard of their faith. He had learned of their service. He had felt their conviction. It had been his goal for some time to take the gospel all the way to Spain, and when he did, he said, he would stop in Rome. He was already making plans to see their faces, to hear their voices, and to know their presence.
Ancient letters customarily began with an extended salutation and a prayer of thanksgiving. His words of thanksgiving are so interesting here, because we usually think of giving thanks for something we know, something that we have experienced. So thanksgiving is generally a past-tense exercise, isn’t it? Thanksgiving itself is a celebration in remembrance of a “first thanksgiving” in this country. But Paul’s thanksgiving prayer here expresses his hope for a future homecoming. What makes it even more interesting, knowing the “rest of the story” (Paul Harvey), is that Paul’s longed-for homecoming… will never come. When he finally arrived in Rome, it was not with letters of greeting and commendation, but with papers of house-arrest. When he finally arrived in Rome he was not received with open arms and holy kisses, but with the chains of imprisonment. His hope-filled thanksgiving was never more than that -- a wish and a prayer.
AMY: And isn’t that how it usually is? This week we will gather for some sort of celebration with family and friends, but no matter how hard we try or how hard we pretend, it will not be exactly what we had planned or precisely what we had hoped for. Someone will have died since last Thanksgiving and forever their place at the table will be vacant. Someone will have been laid-off from their job and someone else will have separated from their spouse. Someone will have a bad report from the doctor and a parent of some teenage rebellion will use all of the energy necessary to just make it through the day. And someone will burn the turkey. But we give thanks anyway because somewhere and sometime before, we have known God’s grace and God’s goodness, and it is then that we will give thanks for Thanksgivings that never were.
RUSS: Paul, as you well know, was no stranger to adversity. He had done his share of wishful thinking. And for many skeptics, our faith is just that, wishful thinking. It is “pie-in-the-sky.” Hoping against hope. Dreaming of what will never be. Placing our lives in the hands of a “God” who simply cannot be seen.
We read and tell a lot of Bible stories at our house. Recently, when I mention “God,” Bennett stops me. He looks through his mother’s big, brown eyes, scouring the page, and then says in confusion, “Where is God?”
True thanksgiving is not rooted in the past, in what we have already experienced, in what we know as certainty. True thanksgiving is always rooted in the face of an unknown future. In precisely the kind of wishful thinking that we are accused of.
I tell Bennett, “God is always here, we just can’t see God,” and our 3-year-old unconvinced skeptic says -- “Oh.”
You see, peace, internal peace is the only proof of our proposal. It is the “peace of God, which surpasses all understanding” (Phil. 4.7), and it is made manifest in a life of joy – even when Thanksgiving never comes.
AMY: In a day of much uncertainty and anxiety and grief and fear in our world, Paul’s words call us to do what seems like the impossible – live a life of thanksgiving presenting our requests to the God of peace. We are urged to concentrate on what is true and noble and right and pure and lovely and admirable. We are called to remember these things and put them into practice. Our world needs that now more than ever if we are to attain peace. And peace begins here, among us.
It’s been 13 years since our Seminary Village Commune dreamed of Thanksgivings together, and we’ve never gathered. Three of us are pastors, 2 have completed their PhD’s and 2 are currently finishing up doctoral work. Amy has remarried and James will be married in March. Between all of us we have 8 children. You know, we don’t have to gather for me to give thanks for Thanksgivings that never were. I am forever grateful for what that gathering of friends taught me about God, and I will forever be thankful. Amen.