How Does Our Big, Multicultural Nation Say Grace Nowadays?

PORTLAND PRESS HERALD
By Meredith Goad

MAINE---How does our big, multicultural nation say grace nowadays? Let us count the ways. Families and friends all over Maine will gather around the table on Thanksgiving Day and say grace. With kids, it’s a lot about learning to be grateful Some will join hands, Norman Rockwell-style, and listen to the family patriarch say a Christian prayer. Others will skip the deity altogether and thank the turkey for its ultimate sacrifice. Or there may be a round robin of thanksgiving as each person at the table takes a turn counting blessings from the past year. “Too much of our life is scrubbed clean of the sacred,” said Dana Sawyer, a professor of philosophy and world religions at the Maine College of Art. “We’re drowning in materialism, not just in the consumer sense of that but in this idea that there is no metaphysical aspect to life, and I think people are kind of starved for the sacred.” [link]