Some appreciation for the less-thanked among us

Every Thanksgiving my column before the holiday is a list of things and people for which and for whom I am thankful. My list is always quirky and filled with things that are normally not thanked and not thought of on this great and universal national holiday (I am still getting thank you notes for including squirrels one year).

Here is my 2018 Thanksgiving thank you list (send me your additions):

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Rescue dogs and cats and their rescuers.

Some pets have pedigrees and some pets just have muttagrees. The pedigree pets have shows to parade and preen their perfection. Their main trait is that they look good. The muttagree pets, the animals rescued from animal shelters, are my favorites. They are the survivors of an animal-hostile world. They are left to eke out an existence in the shadows of the mean streets, and when caught are either sold for medical experiments, killed in dog fighting rings, or when the cages at the shelters are filled, are euthanized. It is a nasty, brutish and short life for many of them. However, some of them find a kind, loving home just in the nick of time. Many of you, my dear readers, have rescue dogs or cats sleeping next to you right now. My friend Vicky spends her own money to take stray cats to the vet to have them neutered so that they do not produce an ever growing herd of new residents for her open garage. Thank you, Vicky!

I used to bless the animal adoption busses of the North Shore Animal League on Long Island, and painted on the side of one of the busses was a cartoon drawn by Patrick McDonnell, who draws the cartoon strip, Mutts. Mutts is thinking, "I know what it's like to be alone in a cage ...waiting for a kindness from a stranger. You wait and wait ... hoping ... praying ... thinking, 'Life shouldn't be like this ... you know you can do more ... be more ... you hold onto the dream ... you just wish someday you could share it with someone."

Thank you to all those who rescue the trembling animals who live among us in search of food and love and their part of the dream that God has placed into every living creature.

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Crossing Guards.

Crossing guards are like kid shepherds. They sit at busy crosswalks and when their little sheep arrive at the curb, they hold up their hand-held stop sign and walk into the street ahead of them. They then say with words or with a nod, "You are safe now. You can cross the river of asphalt and tires because I will protect you." Then they go back to their corner and sit down and wait for a new herd to gather. I wonder why the 23rd Psalm does not say, "The Lord is my crossing guard, I shall not want ... " Maybe it's because they didn't have those hand-held stop signs back then.

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Nursing home aides.

My mom is 97 and living in a very fine nursing home in Milwaukee. She is deaf and cannot walk. She cannot toilet herself. When I visited her recently, I watched as an aide took my mother to the bathroom, lifted her out of her wheelchair into a strange device and took her to the toilet. It was not a degrading experience for my mother, but it could have been except that the aide spoke warm and tender words of encouragement to mom -- words she probably could not hear but those words made a difficult personal moment less difficult. Such physical maintenance of our elderly is a sacred thing. It is an act of physical compassion. We have subcontracted the care of our parents to strangers. I am moved to my core and thankful beyond measure that after they care for our parents in our stead, they are strangers no longer.

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Colored leaves in the fall.

Nature's beauty always seems to have some kind of evolutionary purpose. Colored bird feathers and butterfly wings are a mating magnet. Colored fish need the colors to hide in their colored reefs. Alone among all the beautiful colored array in the natural world are the red and yellow leaves of fall trees. Dear readers, please help me (an avid collector of useless facts) -- what possible evolutionary purpose is served by the blazing foliage of the fall? The leaf colors do not warn away invasive insects. They do not assist in protecting the tree from disease. To my mind and soul they have no purpose except to fill the Northwoods with beauty. At least that is how I see it, and so I consider the fall foliage a little message from God to be thankful not just for the utilitarian bounty of nature but also for the sheer aesthetic beauty of nature. The fact that Thanksgiving always arrives with the colored leaves fills my soul with joy and thanks.

(Send ALL QUESTIONS AND COMMENTS to The God Squad via email at godsquadquestion@aol.com. Rabbi Gellman is the author of several books, including "Religion for Dummies," co-written with Fr. Tom Hartman.)