I was driving to town, listening to the radio the other day and I heard an interviewer ask a Black Friday Shopping Consultant – the title just makes me blink – what she might advise people to do on Black Friday. Well, said the interviewer, officious and earnest: First, examine all of the retail websites carefully before shopping, including the price comparison sites that will list the best bargains. Second, wear sneakers and loose-fitting clothes, so that you will have solid footing and not be trampled, as someone was last year. (Two shoppers last year also brought tasers to stores, she reminded us, to stun fellow bargain-hunters.)  Then, make sure you have your address and identification papers so your family can be notified if you are crushed or injured. Bring food and water, as you might be stuck in long lines and become fatigued, even collapse. Most retailers are setting up first-aid stations as well as hiring extra security guards.

Please, she said, leave your children at home as the mobs in mall parking lots and stores are not safe, and children can be more easily trampled or injured. Have cell phones so you can coordinate shopping with friends and family members and also tell them where you are if you get lost. I was struck by this interview, in that it seemed to me the instructions for holiday shopping on Black Friday were almost identical to those given soldiers entering combat zones in Iraq and Afghanistan. The so-called “good” retailers, the small and community-minded ones, are responding with “Plaid Fridays”, cash mobs and gentler, greener, more wholesome retailing, if there is such a thing. Spend your money quietly and in greater safety.  I have always known I was odd and strange, but sometimes I think the world is crazier than I am.

And this is the primary discussion of what was once our purest and simplest and most American of holidays, Thanksgiving. I imagine the Pilgrims sitting down to their simple dinners and thanking God they survived another year. Would they weep for their legacy? Maybe a little.

Wal-Mart will be open Thanksgiving afternoon for those who are planning early. Thanksgiving and remembrance in the Corporate Nation.  Will anyone be giving thanks for our lives on Black Friday, or will shoppers be giving thanks that they survived it and lived to get a better price on their CD player and microwave?

Everyone I know has been obsessed, nearly crazed over the political campaigns, and I was relieved when they ended, thinking the raging river might quiet down a bit and people would become less angry and fearful. But checking on some online news sites yesterday, I see that the river never stops raging, it just breaks through in different places. When we aren’t stomping one another on Black Friday, our holiday season will be defined by extra-marital affairs, dirty e-mails and more accusations of strange behaviors and cover-ups. The dance powerful men play. One thing that does  not ever change is the strange and inexplicable behavior of men in power.

I have to stay out of the raging river – politics, health care, the law, media. I can’t handle the currents and don’t really want to. They are not compatible with my notion of a meaningful life, driven as they are by conflict, anger and greed.  But during the holidays I will look for points of light. And I always find them. A good friend of mine is determined to get involved in politics and make it better – more humane, less confrontational, more democratic.  She is jumping in. The people in the Occupy Wall Street Movement have gotten out of their bedrolls and parks and helped thousands of people whose lives were upended after Hurricane Sandy. They have learned what I have not yet learned in my sometimes selfish and narcisstic life – to plunge into the raging river and to try and tame it and make it gentler and better.

This is what faith and spirituality is to me.  Good comes from everything, everything is a gift, love is ultimately more powerful than anything, even Four-start generals and Wal-Mart sales.  On Black Friday, Maria and I will be giving thanks for you, for our friends, for our new home and the animals we love. And we will toss in a few prayers for those who need to shop.