November 23, 2020
Dear Notre Dame,
This month's Newsletter gives me a wonderful opportunity to wish you a Happy Thanksgiving. I know our Thanksgiving celebrations may be different this year, but at the same time we have much to be thankful for. I'm particularly grateful that we have not had any instance of any student or faculty member contracting COVID-19 while in the school building. I pray that all of our students and extended community members are healthy, especially as the holidays approach.
In this season of gratitude, I also want to thank you for your ongoing financial support of our beloved school. Next Tuesday, December 1, is Giving Tuesday, a global day of generosity. In the next few days you will be receiving video messages from several of our outstanding students reminding you of this day and asking for your help. I hope that you will respond in any way you can. (CLICK HERE for link to donate.)
As Thanksgiving marks the end of the growing season in the Northeast, I found the poem "Thanksgiving" which Ms. Brilliant shared in the News of the Week to resonate. Enjoy the poem and this month's edition of Chez News.
Thanksgiving
by Ella Wheeler Wilcox
We walk on starry fields of white
And do not see the daisies;
For blessings common in our sight
We rarely offer praises.
We sigh for some supreme delight
To crown our lives with splendor,
And quite ignore our daily store
Of pleasures sweet and tender.
Our cares are bold and push their way
Upon our thought and feeling.
They hand about us all the day,
Our time from pleasure stealing.
So unobtrusive many a joy
We pass by and forget it,
But worry strives to own our lives,
And conquers if we let it.
There's not a day in all the year
But holds some hidden pleasure,
And looking back, joys oft appear
To brim the past's wide measure.
But blessings are like friends, I hold,
Who love and labor near us.
We ought to raise our notes of praise
While living hearts can hear us.
Full many a blessing wears the guise
Of worry or of trouble;
Far-seeing is the soul, and wise,
Who knows the mask is double.
But he who has the faith and strength
To thank his God for sorrow
Has found a joy without alloy
To gladden every morrow.
We ought to make the moments notes
Of happy, glad Thanksgiving;
The hours and days a silent phrase
Of music we are living.
And so the theme should swell and grow
As weeks and months pass o'er us,
And rise sublime at this good time,
A grand Thanksgiving chorus.