GIVING THANKS: A CLOSER LOOK

Editor's note: Southeast Missourian Reporter Jeffrey Jackson spent Thursday as a volunteer server at the Salvation Army Thanksgiving dinner.

What I will remember most are people's faces -- faces that at other times and in other places I might have overlooked, even ignored, because they are different, sometimes rougher, harder.

But I looked.

Perhaps it was the nature of the day itself, a day that compels you to see beyond your otherwise myopic vision of life, a day dedicated to counting blessings and acknowledging that something indeed transcends your own narrow world.

Perhaps it is the stories you've heard but only vaguely remember about the first Thanksgiving and how both Pilgrims and Indians looked beyond their fixed societies to welcome others in.

For whatever reason, there, in that time and that place, you look at the faces of people you have never seen before, your eyes meeting those of strangers. A connection is made. And then something quite unexpected happens -- a smile.

It was early when I arrived at the Salvation Army, a few minutes before 7:30, my eyes still heavy with sleep. The doors had not yet been unlocked and, because I had left my jacket in the car, I stood outside shivering and waiting in the brisk morning air.

I did not quite know what to expect when I got there. It was my first year as a Thanksgiving Day volunteer and my knowledge of the Salvation Army went barely beyond the image of bell ringers at shopping malls during the Christmas buying season.

What brought me there? Why would others come to volunteer?

I was there to help others, certainly. But I was there foremost, I suppose, for selfish reasons. Frankly, I could not stand the thought of spending the holiday alone in my apartment, just me, a couple of football games and whatever I found in the refrigerator to eat that wouldn't remind me too much of turkey, cranberries and pumpkin pie.

Similar reasons brought Clara there.

Clara had moved to town from Sikeston last April following her divorce. The last thing she wanted, she told me, was to be by herself feeling sorry for herself on Thanksgiving.

And she shouldn't have been alone. To watch her dart from station to station -- scooping out instant mashed potatoes and gravy or dishing up helpings of coleslaw, a constant, gentle smile on her face, always a kind word -- made it clear that here was a woman who should never be alone, who should be with people.

As the dinner hour approached, a scowling man in ragged clothes wandered in and plopped down at a table by himself toward the back of a gymnasium that had been converted into a dining room for the day. He sat alone mumbling to himself, sometimes quite animatedly, the lines of his brow etched like a epitaph into face, his frown growing deeper.

Clara sat down near him and started a conversation. She did most of the talking. If she noticed his dirty, tattered clothes or his odd ways, she said nothing. It was neither the time nor the place to call to mind differences. And for a brief moment, he smiled.

The thing I discovered most during the hours I spent with the folks at the Salvation Army was how the differences that so often divide us as people seemed to vanish in that house of God. There were no rich people or poor people, no educated or illiterate, no black or white, no beautiful or ugly, no strong or weak.

There were only people who had come together from sometimes desperate or lonely lives to share time and laughter and the blessings of life.

These are faces I will not soon forget.