November Thanksgiving 7

Today I'm thankful for my friends. I'm thankful my family, immediate and extended, are all in good health as we approach the holiday season.

I'm thankful for a good public library, one of the best in the country. Today we visited and found remains of the large annual book sale. I found a volume of Walker Percy's Signposts in a Strange Land, a children's picture Bible from the Taize community in France, a copy of Frederica Mathewes-Green's Facing East (for a friend), Henri Nouwen's Our Second Birth, an anthology of Jewish commentary on the Torah from medieval Yemen, and a copy of Jim MacDonald's Communicate with Your Child (for a friend). Plus a few others. (Emmylou Harris' Light of the Stable!)

I'm thankful for our beagle, who is good company, though she always wants a share of my snack, the front seat of the mini-van, and to be let in or out.

I'm thankful for houseplants, during cold months of the year. The $2.50 Wal-Mart poinsettia I bought a few years ago has grown into a small bush.