ASHEVILLE, N.C. -- In the days following Thanksgiving, there's already Black Friday and Small Business Saturday and Cyber Monday to kick off the holiday shopping season.
Now, a group of charities and corporate sponsors is urging Americans to make the Tuesday after Thanksgiving just as powerful a day of giving to those in need.
It's called #GivingTuesday, and organizers say it's gaining momentum as the holiday shopping season approaches.
"We have two days that are good for the economy. Here is a new day that is good for the soul," said Henry Timms, deputy executive director of strategy, innovation and content of 92nd Street Y in New York City, where the idea was hatched.
There are 800 partners, from non-profits to corporations, including heavy hitters such as Microsoft and Sony. Timms credits the social-media community with growing the momentum.
Is "sabbath" a verb?
Can one "sabbath?"
"I'm sabbathing right now"...or..."Mike is not available right now. He's out sabbathing somewhere and cannot be reached for comment."
I don't know.
I'm pondering this grammatical reframing of the word. Why? Well, it's a Commandment. Keeping the sabbath is a commandment (Exodus 20:8) right there with not murdering, lusting after your neighbor's wife, or worshiping other gods.
Yep, it's a commandment and I'm just plain terrible at keeping it these days.
The only answer in this life, to the loneliness we are all bound to feel, is community. The living together, working together, sharing together, loving God and loving our [neighbor], and living close to [God] in community so we can show our love for [God]. - Dorothy Day + Sign up to receive our quote of the day via e-mail
This Thanksgiving, we at Sojourners are thankful for each of you — for your activism, your readership, your donations, your prayers. We could not do any of this work without your support. So today, we’d like to highlight just a few of the ways your participation and contributions have helped affect real change in Washington, across the country in your communities, and truly worldwide.
Speaking of the widow’s offering, Jesus says: “Truly, I tell you, this poor widow has put in more than all those who are contributing to the treasury. For all of them have contributed out of their abundance; but she out of her poverty has put in everything she had, all she had to live on.” (Mark 12:41-44)
Today, families across America will gather round tables full of food. They will hold hands and pray. They will give thanks for the blessings that have come to each member over the past year. Some of these families’ tables will be covered with turkeys, stuffing, cranberry sauce, and yams; symbols of abundant blessing. Others will give thanks over Hillshire Farms sliced turkey sandwiches on Wonder bread; symbols of blessing in the midst of hard slog of poverty. Though their tables are bare, their thanks offerings are full of power. For, like the widow’s offering, Jesus reveres the offerings of the poor.
This Thanksgiving, as your family holds hands and give thanks and as your church packs Thanksgiving dinner baskets, and this Christmas season churches prepare gift baskets for those Jesus called “The Least of these” (Matthew 25:40) we at Sojourners ask you to do one more thing: Take five minutes and handwrite a simple letter to your member of Congress.
In search of a story that will “make you believe in God?”
It’s a heavy undertaking. Kind of like trying to adapt that story to film, as screenwriter David Magee and director Ang Lee did brilliantly in Life of Pi, which opens nationwide today.
The film, adapted from Yann Martel’s moving book, takes on massive questions — who is God, how do we find God, and why do bad things happen to us — as we follow Pi, a zookeeper’s son shipwrecked on a lifeboat with a Bengal tiger.
“I think we’re humble filmmakers — I don’t think we can answer why bad things happen to people,” Magee told Sojourners Tuesday. “But I do think it puts into perspective the fact that within every ordeal there is a lesson.
“This is very much a story about storytelling,” Magee added. “It’s very much a story about how those different narratives help us get through. It can’t promise to answer why we go through the things we do, but it can say what we take away from them.”