My friend Lavina Fielding Anderson died this week, and that means Thanksgiving is earlier and sadder for me than usual this year. Lavina introduced me to this beautiful passage from a sermon of John Donne, and I make everyone listen to it every year before Thanksgiving dinner. I have been reading it over and over, along with Lavina’s beautiful essays on mercy. God made sun and moon to distinguish seasons, and day and night, and we cannot have the fruits of the earth but in their seasons; but God hath made no decree to distinguish the seasons of his mercies. In paradise the fruits were ripe the first minute, and…