giving thanks for flesh.

Flesh. All sorts of things come to mind when we hear this word: ham and giant turkey legs, naked bodies, evil inclinations and internal spiritual struggles.

The ancient Greek philosophers tell us that the body is a prison, and that our soul must finally escape this flesh and return to the spiritual realm from which it came. The body is a source of pollution, corruption, and evil to the soul. This world, where physical things like bodies run around, is an alien place to the soul and its only salvation from this evil place is found in freeing the mind from bodily and worldly evil. If this freeing of the mind is accomplished, these disembodied souls will return to their home in the heavenly realm. If the mind is not sufficiently purged of these evil worldly things, then the souls will fall back to the earth, into another flesh-prison, for yet another go at the whole process.

The ancient rabbis, in their many commentaries on the Hebrew scriptures, make a great effort to remind us that we will not only be held accountable to things such as greed, indulgence, and lust... but we will also be held accountable for those things that we were able to enjoy but did not. That is, they believe God has given us beauty and the ability to receive it, and it is equally offensive to ignore it as it is to worship it.

They come to this conclusion because they see God as a creator of both mankind and the world in which they inhabit. All of it, once it was completed, God said was very good. God made men and women, and their purpose was to enjoy and have dominion over the rest of creation. So, a fundamental part of being a human is participating in the rest of the created realm--mankind was never meant to exist outside of the created world. When the humans refused their place as mere creatures, and instead insisted on godhood, God placed the curse of death and decay upon the whole world. Thus, redemption and salvation is not to avail one's soul of the evil flesh-prison, but to restore all of creation to its intended, non-decaying, state and to destroy death. Humanity's redemption cannot be separated from the entire world's redemption.

I say all of this because I want to make it clear that when I say I am thankful for turkey stuffing and a stuffed belly, I am only expressing my God-given humanity. And I want it to be understood that I am not straying from my Judeao-Christian roots when I say that my mom's new sweet potato recipe, featuring pecans and oranges, is part of all of our redemption.

This thanksgiving, I am giving thanks for the flesh that God has created.