The Pastoral Grind

The First Thanksgiving 1621  By Jean Leon Gerome Ferris (Originally written for The Baldwin Bulletin: Pastor's Column November 29, 2019) I'm not quite sure where this year has gone. For hunters, deer season is here. I'm personally waiting for the ice to be thick enough to do some fishing. Christmas decorations have started to go up around the area. Perhaps some of you have been mapping out the best Black Friday shopping sales. It doesn't feel like my daughter (a preschooler) and my wife (a teacher) started school all that long ago, but now I hear them talking about the Pilgrims and Native Americans. Their classes have each had projects (similar to what I remember doing growing up) that help remember and display certain parts of life around the "First Thanksgiving." Much has been written in recent years about difficulties, conflicts, and tragedies that came with the colonists’ entry into what we now call the United States of America. Through the sp