I’ve been re-reading the Laura Ingalls Wilder books: the series of children’s books about her life growing up in America’s Midwest in the late nineteenth century.
The Ingalls family were subsistence farmers. They raised their own food and lived off the land, except when crops failed, or were eaten by locusts, blackbirds, or gophers.
Plus, they almost froze to death one year in a long winter that came around routinely in their part of South Dakota.
All they did was work, all day from sun-up to sundown, except on Sundays. They travelled by horse-drawn wagon, or they walked.
They made everything from scratch, and ate a diet which would probably kill most people today. And they counted their blessings regularly.
They’re great stories, but they also provide food for reflection and gratitude in prayer.
We comfortable middle-class Catholics tend to forget that milk doesn’t come from the supermarket. Late model SUVs don’t grow on organic farms, and mobile phones aren’t carefully harvested from fair-trade plantations.
So, with this in mind, I would like to re-name today “Industrial Thanksgiving Sunday”. Please feel free to join me in the prayer below.
Today, we give thanks to God for all those people whose problem-solving skills have brought us hot and cold, running, clean, safe, drinkable water in industrially produced metal and concrete pipes across long distances.
We thank God for the inspirations he gave to the early innovators in the industrial revolution. These graces helped them develop the steam engine and faster and better ways of making cloth and clothing.
This liberated the women of the western world from the need to spin and weave day and night, without a break. We, the women of the west, also remember in grateful prayer today the inventors of the domestic washing machine, vacuum cleaner, and dishwasher.
We thank God for the graces of intelligence and reason that he gave to the countless men and women who worked patiently in laboratories to crack the code of common diseases and sicknesses.
We thank him too for all those involved in the development of cheap and accessible medicines that have saved lives across the globe.
We thank him for the skills he stirred up in the men and women who developed safe anaesthesia and antisepsis. For the grace and blessing of painless dentistry, we also thank you, Lord.
We give especial thanks to God for the gift of safer, hygienic, and less painful childbirth. This has saved the lives of millions of women and children, including those in our own families.
We thank you, Lord, for the fact that most of us are better fed, clothed, and housed that any previous generation in this country.
We are surrounded by the bounty of your beautiful and fertile earth, thanks to those who have invested time and money in market gardening and farming to feed us.
We ask you to bless them for their willingness to take risks with their own money and work long hours for this end.
We thank you, Lord, for our taxation system which ensures that even those with nothing can access funds from the common wealth of our blessed nation.
We thank you also for our health care system, which allows even the poorest to access good medical care free at the point of use.
We spend a lot of our time on our phones, Lord, so thank you for the innovators and creators who dreamed up and built and mass-produced these devices for us.
We thank you also for their willingness to dream big and risk their own money and time for something they thought was important.
Help us to use all our electronic devices with moderation and wisdom to build your kingdom, and not for stupidity and self-indulgence.
Thank you, Lord, for the graces we take for granted every day: supermarkets, a steady and uninterrupted electricity supply, clothes that fit and are comfortable, clean and safe food, and low unemployment.
Help us to remember that these blessings have all come to us from you, via the wonderful gift of human ingenuity in all its diverse forms—reason, intelligence, hard work, persistence, and the willingness to take risks.
Help us to reflect on how original sin lost us the blessing of simply living at peace in creation. Remind us to ask your forgiveness for bringing death into the world.
And help us always to thank you for everything you have given us since our fall. Help us all to continue working to make this world bearable for as many people as possible, while we wait to join you again in heaven. Amen.