SAVING GRACE
Saving Grace began after the 9/11 attacks as a national dialogue to reconsider the values of Thanksgiving . Annice Jacoby worked with the Interfaith Center of New York and Appalshop Arts in Kentucky, artists, religious leaders and citizen advocates to rally for options to revenge and war. Thanksgiving was an opportunity for reflection, the most sacred of our secular holidays. Gathering together, we acknowledge our bounty, the ties that bind us to each other and the world. Saving Grace offered new rituals of sustainable gratitude for our nation. Artists and community leaders across the country circulated Saving Grace postcards to bring conversations of substance to the holiday table. Saving Grace was a call to ask tougher questions, reflect and grapple with honest uncertainty not just stuffing ourselves. The hope was to find a way to make peace more important than war, gathering more powerful than destroying, in a country consumed by war and revenge, to do better than making wishes on broken bones.
|
The first Thanksgiving celebrants were Native Americans who shared forage offerings, with immigrants fleeing religious persecution. Since, migrations of many fleeing war and persecution have broadened the representation at the American harvest feast. Ask around the tables in America: What protects us? What are our responsibilities to each other? The world? How does our table serve us, serve the world? May we use debate the foundation of American democracy to bring the critical questions of our survival into every dining room? The war we are conducting cannot dim the lights on discussion, but must heighten the role of each citizen in the dialogue, where we live, with our families. This action will strengthen how we hope, how we heal, and how we harvest. |