The Spiritual History of Thanksgiving with Stephen Mansfield—Historian & Author

The Aggressive Life with Brian Tome

Crossroads

Christianity, Religion & Spirituality

4.9 • 756 Ratings

🗓️ 23 November 2021

⏱️ 52 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

You’ve never heard the story of Thanksgiving quite like this. Historian and author, Stephen Mansfield, takes us back to the Mayflower—through the landing at Plymouth Rock, the unbelievable meeting of Samoset, and into the first Thanksgiving celebration. Along the way, he highlights the aggressive faith that drove the Pilgrims, and their life-saving relationships with the Native Americans. This conversation will change the way you think about the last Thursday in November.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to the aggressive life.
0:09.2	You know, we're a few days out from my favorite holiday in the entire world in all
0:15.7	of world history.
0:17.2	It's Thanksgiving.
0:18.8	No matter what that holiday looks like for you, from maybe it's a huge family gathering
0:23.6	or to take out dinner in front of your TV with a couple friends, there is an aggressive
0:28.1	choice that you can make, and that aggressive choice is gratitude.
0:34.1	Gratitude.
0:35.1	Yeah, it's really still possible to be thankful. You wouldn't know it in our contentious
0:39.7	atmosphere where everyone's trying to catch somebody else for being a hypocrite. Everybody's trying to
0:45.2	point out how somebody else is stupid for believing the same things. Everyone is trying to see how
0:49.6	the government is doing the wrong thing, whether you're on the right or the left. I mean,
0:53.0	I don't know that we've ever been in more in gracious times than we are right now, whether you're on the right or the left. I mean, I don't know that we've
0:54.5	ever been in more in gracious times than we are right now. If you're going to choose to be thankful,
1:00.5	you're going to have to aggressively go against the tide of cynicism and judgmentalism in our culture.
1:09.7	Bad, bad, bad, bad stuff.
1:11.0	Science is very clear that practicing gratitude
1:12.7	is one of the healthiest things you can do.
1:14.7	Studies have shown it improves sleep quality,
1:17.3	reduces feelings of anxiety and depression.
1:20.3	It lowers inflammation and the risk of heart failure.
1:23.6	It even results in less doctors visits.
	...

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