Four Hundred Years Since That First Thanksgiving: 1621-2021

In 1621 Governor William Bradford of Plymouth Colony proclaimed a day of thanksgiving for the Mayflower Pilgrims to celebrate a first of many harvests in America.

November 24, 2021

Just as I sat down to type this post, I watched the American President pardon two turkeys. The ritual is never the high point of my year. I don’t know about you, but I cannot recall a spirit of Thanksgiving ever being a bigger challenge than it is now in 2021, 400 years after the first. It was well into November this year before I even became conscious that this is the 400th anniversary of that first Thanksgiving. I have seen very little reference to it in the news. It seems to have a lot of competition for headlines right now.

After two years in a global pandemic, with the tides of political unrest bearing down on us, a spirit of Thanksgiving in 2021 is not easy to find. Our politics bitterly divide us. Our faith is mired in scandal. Even worse, it is mired in open capitulation to some of the “woke” politics of our time. Freedom itself seems to stand at a precipice. Half the world is seriously disappointed in the power struggles that always emerge in a leadership vacuum.

I know families who have had to establish strict rules of discourse before they can sit at the same Thanksgiving table this year. Trump, Biden, Congress, the Border, Afghanistan, vaccine mandates, and multi-trillion dollar government spending plans are all off the table. For some, even Pope Francis, the TLM, Biden’s Catholicism, and Catholic Communion are on the list of forbidden table topics. “Go stuff that turkey,” could take on a never previously intended alternate meaning this year.

This is my 28th Thanksgiving holiday in wrongful imprisonment. Over the course of the last 16 of those years, Pornchai Moontri and I and a few of our friends here formed a sort of family bond and spirit on-the-inside. Pornchai and I were the co-anchors of that small group. Now he is half a world away, and the others have moved on to other places. As Andy Dufresne’s friend, Red, said in The Shawshank Redemption, “The place where I live seems that much more drab and empty by his absence.”

For the 1,250 men living behind these prison walls, Thanksgiving is the least anticipated holiday. Some years ago, the New Hampshire State employees gave up Columbus Day in exchange for having the day after Thanksgiving — Black Friday — as a day off. That typically means that every activity that might get us out of our cells over a 5-day stretch is unavailable. This holiday means five days of meaningless confinement. Prison evokes anything but thanksgiving.

Woe is me! I should take my cue from the famous Gallo Brothers who once vowed never to serve any whine before its time.

A Harvest of Grace

If you are not seriously depressed yet, there is still very much for which I give thanks. Like everything in life, the meaning of Thanksgiving is more what I bring to it than what I find there. I could turn my gratitude list into a litany that might go on for pages, so I will write of just the highlights.

I am thankful to Father George David Byers for writing in my stead with candid honesty over the last two weeks. The comments by Father James Valladares and Dorothy Stein — writers both — on “A Code of Silence in the U.S. Catholic Church” gave voice to everything I could possibly say. I fret about the topics he wrote about, and I could not have written those posts myself. I never want to be an instrument of division in the Church, but as Father George wrote, “The Truth has its own life and must not be buried with anyone.”

I am thankful — profoundly thankful — that my priesthood has not fallen prey to what Ryan MacDonald recently called “the accuse crisis in the Church.” So many priests have been thrown out of the priesthood merely for being accused. The truly innocent often cannot prove their innocence while the truly guilty are given no chance to repent. As Ryan has written, it all seems far more Calvinist than Catholic.

I am thankful — very thankful — for the many priests who have stood by the truth, sometimes at a cost to themselves. Our Canon Law advisor, Father Stuart MacDonald comes to mind. So does Cardinal George Pell. They are deeply good priests and shepherds who have survived the cauldron of the “accuse crisis” to become even greater stewards in the vineyard of Christ Crucified.

I am thankful — very thankful — for my freedom to write. On almost a daily basis I receive letters and messages from people around the world telling me that something I wrote in the darkness of prison has somehow brought light into their existence. They should not thank me, for I thank only God.

I am thankful — profoundly thankful — for the opportunity to offer the Sacrifice of the Mass each week late on Sunday nights in my prison cell. I have read of Cardinal George Pell’s prison deprivation from the Eucharist. My plight could be so much worse.

A Harvest in Thailand

I am thankful — very thankful — for having led my friend, Pornchai Moontri, from the darkest of human darkness into the light of Divine Mercy. But it was a task that was far beyond me. I was only an instrument in it, and for that I am profoundly thankful. I hope you have seen the outcome of that wonderful grace in my recent post, “Pornchai Moontri, Citizen of the Kingdom of Thailand.”

We received the image above just a few days ago. When Pornchai traveled to obtain his official Thai ID in Phu Wiang (pronounced Poo-vee-ANG), the village of his birth in the far northeast of Thailand, he decided to stay for a month to try to repair his mother’s half-built house and once again honor her tomb at the Buddhist temple nearby.

Before returning to Bangkok with Father John Le, Pornchai stayed to help his family harvest his Aunt’s rice crop. This harvest is his elderly Aunt’s sole income for the year. Pornchai took the photo above and sent it to me. The people in the photo are his cousins and several of their friends who team up each harvest season to bring in the year's rice crop. It is hard work in the high heat and humidity, but it is a labor of love and family commitment.

In so many ways, Pornchai Moontri’s life and odyssey mirror that of “Squanto,” who became a captive member of the Native American Wampanoag tribe of what is now Massachusetts. Squanto proved to be an invaluable friend to the pilgrim settlers leading up to their first harvest Thanksgiving in 1621. He is the real star in our tale of Thanksgiving. You may see the same parallels I see between the odyssey of Squanto and that of Pornchai.

Early in Squanto’s life he was captured, transported against his will to a far country, and sold into slavery in Spain. He was rescued by a Catholic priest and was returned, by a long circuitous route, to his home with his entire life transformed. Squanto became the sole reason for the survival of the Mayflower pilgrims, and acted as interpreter at the Treaty of Plymouth, signed in 1621 between Chief Massasoit and Governor William Bradford.

That story has become a Thanksgiving tradition for many readers Beyond These Stone Walls. If you have never read it, you must. If you have read it before, visit it anew and share it with others. I do not usually boast of any post of mine, but there is much within it about suffering and Divine Providence that gives me pause. The story evokes — even in prison — a prayer of heartfelt Thanksgiving. Make our harvest tradition your own with ...

The True Story of Thanksgiving: Squanto, the Pilgrims and the Pope

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Note from Father Gordon MacRae: Something wonderful has emerged from this blog’s connection with Thailand that I hope to share with you here next week as an Advent post. It will present an invitation that I hope many will accept. Changing the world begins with us in just one small corner of it.

Thank you for reading and sharing this post and these related posts from my typewriter:

The True Story of Thanksgiving: Squanto, the Pilgrims and the Pope

Pornchai Moontri, Citizen of the Kingdom of Thailand

The Challenge of Thanksgiving in the Midst of the Fall

The Challenge of Thanksgiving in the Midst of the Fall

The Mayflower pilgrims arrived in America on November 21, 1620. Squanto, the real hero of our Thanksgiving, has a 400 year-old tale of survival in a pandemic.

Thanksgiving by Fr Gordon MacRae

Editor’s Note: The following post was written by Father Gordon MacRae in November 2020, a time when all Thanksgiving became a challenge under the weight of a global pandemic. Nonetheless, there is cause for Thanksgiving here.

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The autumnal equinox brought trial after trial to us behind these stone walls. My litany of woes will follow, but if you have been reading my posts you know I cannot let “autumnal equinox” pass by without comment. The equinox occurs twice each year when the Sun crosses the celestial equator resulting in equal day and night on Earth. In the Northern Hemisphere, this happened on September 22 marking the autumnal equinox. The term comes from the Latin, “aequinoctium” for “equal night.”

But for me, the equinox brought forth more night than day. I’ll get to the point in a moment. My friend, Father George David Byers often chides me for being too subtle when I write. He says that most people want to get right to the point without being led to it through the labyrinthine ways of one of my posts. That’s another really cool word. It refers to a maze. The word was first used in Greek mythology to refer to a maze built by Daedalus for Minos, King of Crete. In the Greek myth, Daedalus and his son, Icarus were imprisoned there, but escaped with wings made of wax. Icarus flew too close to the Sun and perished.

The word was also used by Francis Thompson in the first verses of one of my favorite epic poems, “The Hound of Heaven,”

I fled Him, down the nights and down the days;
I fled Him, down the arches of the years;
I fled Him down the labyrinthine ways of my own mind;
And in the midst of tears, I hid from Him.
And under running laughter, up vistaed hopes I sped;
And shot, precipitated, adown Titanic glooms
Of chasmed fears, from those strong Feet.
That followed, followed after.

I never tire of reading these verses, but the rest seems a chore, a stark reminder of where I have spent the last 30 American Thanksgivings. The next verse reminds me too much of prison:

I stand amid dust of the mounded years —
My mangled youth lies dead beneath the heap.
My days have crackled, and gone up in smoke,
Have puffed and burst as sunstarts on a stream.
Yea, faileth now even to dream.

But I have thwarted Francis Thompson on one point. I still dream, even when I wish I did not. Like what Fr. Byers says of my writing, my dreams are too subtle, and leave me pondering them for days to come. I shared a strange one with you a few years ago, a time that now seems far older. That post was, “Prison Journal: A Midsummer Night’s Midlife Crisis.” It was a haunting dream in which I returned to where I started religious life some 48 years ago as a Capuchin. Strangely, Pornchai Moontri, my friend of the present, was with me there. I realized only days later that the dream took place early in the morning of August 17, the day I professed first vows as a Capuchin.

And I realize only now that at the time I was professing my first vows, Pornchai was two years old and had just been abandoned by both his parents whose lives had fallen apart. Pornchai was left to find food in streets, and was treated for severe malnutrition. The echoes of our lives resonate through these dreams. That one ended when Pornchai and I left Mass to start down a long winding path. “Where are we going?” he asked.

I bring this up again because I more recently suffered through a sequel to that same dream. It was a continuation of it. Pornchai was gone and I walked alone on that same path. I was back in my Capuchin habit with the large wooden rosary we once wore hanging from my cincture. I was troubled that the rosary was too long. The crucifix at the end of it was dragging along the ground as I walked. When I bent down to pick it up, I was startled to see that the Body of Christ was gone. I had to go back to find Him, but I was frozen in place not knowing how far back I would have to go. I decided that I will just have to carry the cross for the rest of the way.

Trials That Came with the Fall

With the autumnal equinox, all the trials came at once. Father George David Byers wrote of some of them recently in his post, “Censoring the Already Censored: That Hurts Bad.” A BTSW reader kindly sent me a printed copy. I was grateful for the effort, but his title was not subtle enough. Nonetheless, it was all true, and even a little cryptic where it needed to be.

My writing over the years helped to develop a wonderful team from the United States, Thailand, and Australia that came together to assist my friend, Pornchai. His story is seen as one of the most amazing accounts of grace, conversion, and redemption ever to appear in print. Our team worked hard to prepare for his repatriation to Thailand. “Repatriation” is the nice word that we use to cover up the hard truth of it. He is being expelled from the United States as a criminal alien. “Send me your tired, and your poor, and your huddled masses yearning to be free,” and we will put them in cages until we can throw them out.

It was not long before the American disdain for the stranger and alien in our midst developed into a profitable business for some. “Profit” means that some private enterprise has taken over a task of government, and then stretched it out to strengthen the bottom line. After leaving me on this path on September 8, 2020, Pornchai was told by his ICE detention handlers that he would be in Thailand by the end of September. Then they misplaced his travel documents and he would leave by the end of October.

Then nothing — absolutely nothing — was done to arrange travel for him. He had seven different ICE handlers in seven weeks, each one starting from scratch, seemingly clueless about what came before or what comes next. The final one seemed at least professional and sympathetic, but the 90-day travel documents issued by his Consulate were left to expire on November 10, and we were left to start over. Meanwhile, Pornchai was living eight to a room, then forty to a room, and then eighty to a room. He was held in captivity a full five months after his prison sentence was served in full.

Funds I was saving for Pornchai’s future were rerouted to pay for his survival. Food is sold to detainees at hugely inflated prices. Telephone calls are eleven cents per minute. All the hopes Pornchai left here with began to fade. Our daily phone call, so necessary for his survival, became a daily pep talk while I struggled to really believe all that I was telling him, and he struggled to believe as well. ICE detention is a one-size-fits-all American horror story.

No nation can survive with open borders through which anyone can enter at will. Only the most clueless radical would advocate for such a thing. But ICE and the for-profit concentration camps that feed off it are not the American way. This is not a nightmare of four years in the making. This is a nightmare that has evolved since September 11, 2001. Justice Sonia Sotomayor, President Barack Obama’s appointee to the Supreme Court, went on record with a majority opinion that any foreign national who commits a crime on U.S. soil is subject to rapid removal. I hope that what happened to Pornchai is not what she meant by “rapid.”

But there is also cause for Thanksgiving here — at least for me, and for Pornchai as well. The grace of Divine Mercy gave us in advance both the helpers and the means necessary to get us through this. Pornchai has never starved, and we were able to help a few around him as well. And we have been able to walk with him, and encourage him in the belief that there is some meaning and purpose in this odyssey. I am most thankful for that.

The Cracks in These Stone Walls

All during the above, as Father Byers wrote with no subtlety at all, we were also facing the collapse of These Stone Walls after eleven years of writing. I was faced with a very difficult choice, and the outcome seemed dismal. Then someone else appeared on the scene with the willingness and ability to salvage everything, and maybe even improve on it a bit. There is cause for much Thanksgiving in that, and in all that now awaits us Beyond These Stone Walls.

And at the same time all of that was going on, Covid-19 renewed and tightened its squeeze on this prison resulting in heightened confinement, even fewer resources for writing, almost no access to a library, and the complete shutdown of any access to Catholic Mass or even a Catholic presence here. All the progress Divine Mercy made in this prison was then in a three-year hibernation. With help from the prison chaplain, a Catholic deacon, I have been able to obtain the elements necessary for Mass once per week.

With Pornchai gone after fifteen years as my roommate, I have had to change the opportunity for Mass. I now begin it on Sundays at 11:30 PM Eastern Time. This is after my new assigned roommate falls asleep and all the prison counts and other security measures end for the day. It is the only time I will not be interrupted. From ICE detention in Jena, Louisiana, it was at 10:30 PM and Pornchai used the Spiritual Communion prayers from his United States Grace Force Prayer Book to join me. There is cause for Thanksgiving in all of this.

And right on cue about three weeks before Pornchai was taken away, I tore the rotator cuff in my right shoulder making normal daily things like writing, even subtle writing, a painful ordeal. This prison has an excellent physical therapist, however, and three-times-weekly treatment over the previous three months had resulted in remarkable recovery without surgery. There is cause for thanksgiving in this, as well.

Enter Squanto of the Dawn Land

Back then, I wrote a post that was to become one of the most read and cited from behind these stone walls. It was the story of the real unsung hero behind the account of the first Thanksgiving that you thought you knew. It is a story that was kept hidden in plain sight for centuries while the story of the bravery and resourcefulness of the Mayflower Pilgrims of 1620 prevailed. Don’t miss, “The True Story of Thanksgiving: Squanto, the Pi1grims, and the Pope.”

This story became a Thanksgiving tradition for our readers over the last decade. It is a remarkable story of human crisis and redemption told in the odyssey of Squanto, a Native American who, like our friend, Pornchai, was stolen from his home, taken to a foreign land, rescued from slavery by a Catholic priest, and then, in the end, restored to his homeland only to find it nearly devastated from a global pandemic. He arrived just before the Mayflower pilgrims did 400 years ago this week. Squanto became one of history’s great emissaries of Divine Mercy. It will be our special Thanksgiving Week post this year.

My version of the story has appeared in numerous sources including a pair of history books. One of them is 1620: The True Story of Thanksgiving by Rick Gregory (2015) and an essay, “A Eucharistic Thanksgiving” by Adam N. Crawford.

I hope you will read and share that story anew to mark Thanksgiving 400 years later as the Pilgrims did, in uncertain times and surrounded in darkness. And please pray for us as we do for you. There is cause for Thanksgiving here!

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You may also like these related links: 

The True Story of Thanksgiving: Squanto, the Pilgrims, and the Pope

Prison Journal: A Midsummer Night’s Midlife Crisis