This Week at The Table

This weekend our country will be taking a day off to be thankful, or at the very least full, very very full. Thanksgiving is an interesting holiday because while it’s essentially secular, in that it doesn’t have a direct connection to any religion in the way that Christmas or Easter do, it has a quasi-spiritual element to it; after all, we are supposed to be giving thanks to someone. Yet for some reason, identifying to whom that thanks is being giving doesn’t always seem important. As long as thanks are given and a copious amount of food is eaten, the weekend is generally a success.

In preparing for this week I began to think about the sorts of things we Canadians tend to be thankful for, and the one thing that is at least given token acknowledgement by politicians and Facebook users far more patriotic than I am, is the idea of freedom.

Freedom is an interesting concept, and one that becomes far more intangible the more we try to understand it. Yet it has a constant presence in our political discourses; our personal interactions; our complaints about social media; and our advertisements for everything from cars to underwear.

This Sunday come ready to chat, there’ll be no formal singing (because I got double booked) so we’ll have time to explore what some songwriters, authors, filmmakers, New Testament writers and all of us have to say about this amorphous and highly contentious idea that we all hold so dear.

I’m looking forward to a cornucopia of ideas this weekend; see you Sunday!

Tim (Penner)

Don’t forget that next week is our community breakfast, there are still some items that need volunteers.