Interfaith Thanksgiving Service
Three Sisters, Thanksgiving Homily
It’s an honor to be included this evening. I’m so grateful to have been so warmly received among the clergy and congregations of Southeast Huntsville. I started at Weatherly in July. Our family spent the summer in transition. We dug up our roots in Birmingham after 20+ years to let ourselves be trans-planted here to a new patch of earth. Gardening. Planting is a common metaphor for faith-work. People of faith are like gardeners or farmers. We know that in the seed there is a promise of something that waits to be. We trust that when you start something small whether that’s personal faith, or a church, or a ministry – if you treat it right – it will grow. I am grateful to be planted alongside my brothers and sisters here in this garden that is Huntsville.
A Cherokee writer pressed a small packet into her friend’s hand. It was a corn shuck, dried and folded into a pouch and tied with a piece of string. “Don’t open it until spring,” she said. So, the friend waited and in May, she untied the packet to find the gift: three seeds. There was a golden kernel of corn, a brown speckled bean, and a white oval pumpkin seed. These are what the Cherokee writer called, the three sisters: corn, beans and squash. The genius of the combination would not be evident above the soil until the three different species were planted together.
When colonists on the Massachusetts shore first saw the vegetable gardens planted by the indigenous people, they inferred that the natives did NOT know how to farm. In the immigrant settlers’ minds, a garden meant straight rows of single species. Row after row of corn, then row after row of beans, etc. The indigenous farmers had a different way of planting. They planted all three seeds together. Row after row with all three side by side. Corn is the first to emerge from the ground. It grows all alone while the others get ready. Beans take their time finding the light only after the root is secure down deep in the ground. Corn, naturally as the first born, grows straight and strong. About the time the corn is knee-high, the bean shoot stops making leaves low to the ground and decides to extend itself into a long vine. Curlicue receptors along the vine guide it to wrap around the corn in a graceful upward spiral. For now, the beans hold back making leaves in order to embrace the corn, keeping pace as it grows. Had the corn not started early, the bean vine would strangle it, but if the timing is right, the corn can easily carry the bean. Pumpkins and squash, meanwhile, take their time – like little sisters tend to do. Their leaves are prickly, deterring nibbling caterpillars. As the squash leaves grow wider, they shelter the soil at the base of the corn and beans. This leafy, protective canopy benefits all three sisters – keeping the moisture in and unwanted plants out. [1]
At the height of summer, the corn stands eight feet tall. Its leaves all hang in every direction so that each one receives the light, and they don’t cast shadows on one another. The bean winds around the cornstalk, weaving itself between the leaves and the ears, never interfering with their work. At the “feet” of the corn and beans is a blanket of extra-large squash leaves eager to receive the light that falls among the stalks of corn. Light, a gift of the sun, is not hoarded by any of the sisters. They share the light, cooperating, not competing. A similar reciprocity is occurring beneath the soil. The root systems of each only take what they need. The bean has the remarkable ability to take nitrogen from the atmosphere and turn it into usable underground nutrients – much needed by the other two sisters. With all this lovely cooperation, is it any surprise that a Three Sisters Garden yields more food than if you grew each one of the sisters separately. Isn’t that fascinating? [2]
Sharing the Light. Yielding nutrients to help each other. Using the strengths of each one to allow the other to grow. Seems like a decent metaphor for interfaith congregations all planted in the same side of town…. Or for gathering with family members who may not share the same ideologies but who return to the places they were planted all together once upon a time.
Recently, a Mennonite pastor wrote in a religious journal about interfaith relationships saying at times we fight, sometimes bitterly, with our cousins in faith. And yet we can see the family resemblance when we stand side by side in front of a mirror. We disagree and, at our best, we cherish our robust specificity while extending the hand of friendship. She helped me understand that we may feel the impulse to downplay differences in order to protect and preserve peace. But we are different. When we experience the tension in divergence of our key tenets of our faith, can we also hold them with gratitude? Gratitude for the ways we each love and serve our communities in the name of God. Gratitude for one another’s devotion to mercy and justice – that provokes us to live humbly and with curiosity toward brothers and sisters (one another) – even in the presence of profound distinctions? [3]
Eugene Peterson’s paraphrase of the Philippians 4 says, Celebrate God all day, every day. I mean, revel in God! Make it as clear as you can to all you meet that you’re on their side, working with them and not against them… Let petitions and praises shape your worries into prayers, letting God know your concerns. Before you know it, a sense of God’s wholeness, everything coming together for good, will come and settle you down.
Out of gratitude for God’s wholeness, each one of us has come this evening recognizing, and celebrating, that we are all planted here together in the Huntsville soil. Planted here to nourish this community with goodness and mercy through our cooperation.
There is wisdom in the Three Sisters Garden for human beings to not merely co-exist but to flourish – sharing the Light – planted in a different way. Oh how this world needs the Light and to see us in harmony. Three distinct species growing side by side speak a truth our community needs to hear: Respect one another, support one another, bring your gift to the world and receive the gifts of others, and there will be enough for all. Amen.
[1] Kimmerer, Robin Wall Braiding Sweetgrass ©2013
[2] ibid.
[3] Florer-Bixler, Melissa The Gift of Interfaith Difference, Christian Century November 2024