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Are you a good judge of character?
This was Stella’s first trip to New Orleans. She walked down the streets with the enthusiasm of a child. Everything was new and shiny. Even if it wasn’t. This was the biggest city she had ever visited. It was fantastic.
Watching all the boats, ships, and barges go by. Up and down the great Mississippi. Water vessels she had no names for being a girl from a land locked state. It was thrilling. Seagulls swooped down taking popcorn from her hand. The sure size of them put the little song birds she was used to to shame.
She had no reference for the variety of sights, sounds, and smells. It was a trip she may never get to make again. This experience would be seared into her memory.
Street performers were on every corner. There was a silver man. A white angel. Three clowns. If a corner didn’t have a statue, someone was playing music. This was marvelous.
The first day; on her way back to the hotel, a thin man staggering from side to side holding a white styrofoam cup approached her. He stared at her as only a wine-o can, with his head vibrating on his shoulders; asked using his best Creole draw, “how’d y’all like bein’ 17 feet un-dur woder ?” Raised his cup in a toast and staggered off. It struck her as odd for a moment, ‘y’all’. There was only one of her.
The next morning she said outside the hotel sipping coffee listening to people talk. Instantly, she was in love with the Creole accent.
Today’s adventure was a walk through as many cemeteries as she could. Marie Laveau’s grave site was one of particular interest. People had left all kinds of trinkets, money, bones, stuff to her that looked so random. But she knew the person that left it there, it meant something to them.
Just like in her own town, grief took on so many different forms. People left flowers, pictures, stuffed toys, cards, tokens of love for their deceased ones.
Walking down the sidewalk, a small group of musicians passed playing lively jazz. Her heart skipped a beat as did her feet. Bobbing her head to the lively tune. “What a city?” She smiled. Barely noticing the butter running down her hand from her delicious corn cob.
The music was still playing in her head; the sudden shock of almost bumping into someone else, stopped her. “I’m sorry.” She smiled. He wouldn’t let her pass. “May I help you?”
His accent was so thick she could barely understand him, “shadow follow you.”
She turned around several times. There was no sun on the sidewalk or street. The tall buildings blocked it. “I’m sorry.” She protested.
He used his hands making a big circle in the air. “Shadow.” He did it again, “ever-whur.”
“I’m not casting a shadow.” She smiled gently.
“Not you.” He clutched a charm that was on a chain around his neck. “No,” he hissed.
“I don’t practice astronomy nor do I believe in consulting familiar spirits.”
He pointed a finger at her, “believe. Shadow round you. Shadow.” He looked her over. This man was making her very nervous. ‘What shadow?’
Maybe he was on something? He started jumping up and down, shouting in a language that was foreign to Stella. A low growl escaped him, “you feel split?” He shook his head, “torn?” He stomped his feet on the pavement, “pulled?” With his fists up against each other, he strained his muscles to pull them apart.
As if struck by lightning, she understood. All of her life she felt like she was a stranger in a strange land. As if there was no place she belonged. The world outside and the world inside her being could never mesh.
“Shadow strong. Shadow,” he paused; looking sad. “Shadow,” she thought he was finished and stepped to walk past him. “Shadow part of you. More,” he corrected. “Greater, less-or.” He reached out to the side of her face. Pulling his hand back with a hiss. “You, shadow, need. One.” He smacked his hands together. She jumped at the assault.
She was more confused now than ever. For a brief moment she wondered; had she picked up something during her cemetery tour. But she didn’t believe in that either.
He acted as if he could read her mind; shook his head, “real. Not dead. Shadow.” He turned, running away from her. Holding his hand as if it was truly hurt, screaming, “shadow real! Shadow! Shadow!”
She looked around herself. There were no shadows. What had just happened here?
Ornaments
Oscar looked out his window. There was a light snow falling. But he knew that it wouldn’t amount to anything. He smiled anyway.
Esther walked outside to her mail box. She was really receiving mail. His smile got wider. Getting mail was a good sign. Maybe that meant that she might stay. Wait a minute you fool, he scolded himself. She told you she was starting her life over. Of course she’s stayin’. He looked back in the direction of her mailbox. The moving van was gone. He hadn’t noticed that before. It was really gone.
He put on his coat and strolled over to her house. He paused before knocking on the door. Music filled his ears; Christmas music. On the inside of the door facing outside was a plaque with the three wise men on it. As he stood there looking at the little plaque it dawned on him that the song was Carol of the Bells. His nervousness went away when he first walked onto the porch, replaced by curiosity. But now it was back. As he raised his hand to knock; she belted out in song over top of Carol of the bells,🎶 “all I want for Christmas is my two front teeth. My two front teeth. My two front teeth. All I want for Christmas is my two front teeth.”
He took a deep breath singing 🎶 “then I’ll have a merry Christmas.”
She opened the door wide, starting the verse over, 🎶All I want..”
He couldn’t stop smiling as they sang together, 🎶 “for Christmas is my two front teeth. Then I’ll have a merry Christmas.”
“Hello stranger.”
“Hi.”
“Come in.” She took his coat and hung it on a coat rack. “How’s tricks?”
“Good.” He hugged her up before spinning her. She giggled. He paused for a moment as he released her, “I’ve been meaning to ask you, how did you get that couch in here by yourself?”
She winked, “I’m talented.”
“I would have helped you.”
“I know. And I appreciate that.”
“You put up a Christmas tree.” It was a little thing sitting on a table; maybe three feet high.
“At first I thought about not, I just,” she blushed, “we just got the house finished. But it is the Christmas season after all.”
“I haven’t put up a tree in years.” He just stared at the little tree like a child looks at a cookie he can’t have.
“Would you like to help me?” He didn’t answer her for a long time. She just watched him as the wheels turned in his mind.
He rubbed his fingers through his hair, “how about I observe?”
“Okay.” She went into the kitchen and came out with two glasses of eggnog as The Russian Dance from The Nutcracker filled the room. She bobbed her head and danced at the music. He smiled despite himself. She was something else. He wanted to get lost in her joy. “I used to hate Christmas.” She smiled. “I can’t remember Christmas before I went to live with my grandparents. They tried to make Christmas special. Mostly I remember Christmas with them being warm but not the joy I saw in other people. When I met my best friend, she had a joy for Christmas that I had never been close too. And I was able to share that joy. And I understand more about the whole Christmas thing.”
He leaned up against the wall watching her. She was putting random ornaments on the tree. “Explain it to me.”
She stopped, just watching him. He was sad. Which wasn’t unusual, but it was a different kind of sadness.
“I can try but I don’t know if I can do it justice. My friend was the one that got me started going to church. She guided me along my path back to Christ. She once told me, as I was ranting about Christmas, that Christians should love Christmas. This is the season to rejoice in the birth of our savior and all that he did for us. Even if you can’t get into the commercialization of the season, we should have an overabundance of joy at Christmas.”
Her words made since to him. He continued watching her for a while. The ornaments she was putting on her tree were a hodge podge mess. “Do they mean things to you?”
She smiled handing him the tin she had them in, “make yourself useful as well as handsome.” He blushed but held the tin. One at a time, he began taking the ornaments out and handing them to her. There was an ornament shaped like a globe.
“I bought this at a thrift store. One of my majors is in Geography.”
“So that acid rain question was a trick?” He raised an eyebrow. A ping of pain raced through him at the thought of her tricking him.
Talk in the snow
“I think she expects more from you than she does your brother. You have the education. The good job. A polish, that if he has he doesn’t show. And I’m assuming he’s not a Christian.”
“Then why beat me up?”
“Because as she sees it, you’re not doing what she expects you to do. Or what she thinks God would expect you to do.”
He stopped. There was woods and snow all around them. There was a secret prayer in her that he knew where they were going. He held both her hands, “I can’t do it anymore Esther. I went to the doctor yesterday. I have an ulcer the size of a grapefruit.” He closed his eyes and shook his head slowly, whispering, “I have to eat a bland diet. I can’t do it anymore.”
“Will you let me read the instructions?”
“How come?” He wanted to kiss her.
“So that when I cook for you, I won’t kill you.” He did kiss her. Not THAT KISS that drove her wild. But it was a kiss from his hot mouth to her cold lips. Lips that were no longer cold. “Tell me about your relationship with your dad?”
He took a deep breath, as they started walking again. “Up until I went to college, I was a work horse. We worked like dogs. Mom and I both. That stopped for mom when my brother came along. Then it was just me. ‘You eat, you work’, dad always said. But mom shielded my brother and he didn’t have to work at all. I prayed for school and rain. Both meant that I didn’t have to work. That was one of the main reasons I went to college, to get away from the work. When he got sick, everything changed. I don’t know if it was because he was sick that he saw me in a whole new light or if it was something greater than the sickness.”
They had stopped walking; when Esther looked up, she saw an amazing landscape before them. The woods had given way to a lake. The woods wrapped around it like a set of giant arms. It could have been a postcard from Colorado but it wasn’t.
“This is breath taking.”
“This is the lake.”
“Where you almost drown?”
He showed her over to a man make bench, brushed off the snow and they sat down. “Karen, my aunt, showed me this place. She told me that it was dad’s favorite place growing up. He never brought me here.” He put his arm around Esther. She leaned into his embrace. “When he came to live with us, one evening I brought him here with a picnic. It was the only time in my life that he ever told me that he was proud of me. After that, we spent many days here, fishing mostly.”
“Did your dad ever talk to you about stuff?”
“Sometimes, but mostly dad and I would just sit.”
“Is that why when something is upsetting you, you retreat to the porch?”
He smiled, “very astute.”
“Why did your dad come to live with you when your mother was younger than him and fully, I’m assumin’, able to take care of him?”
“He asked us. At this point his sister was still alive but my uncle was gone. It was closer to town than the home place.” Oscar stopped, his voice cracked when he spoke again. “I believed that for a long time. One Saturday dad and I came here. He whispered to me like there were a million people around us. ‘Don’t leave me alone with your mother?’ I said dad, why? ‘I don’t want her to hurt me anymore.’” He held Esther even tighter. “Oh God, can you imagine how I felt? I couldn’t believe that my mother was being mean to a frail little old man.”
“I can’t imagine your dad being little.”
“He had shrunk a few inches in is golden years. He was 6’0” when he died. But to me seeing him when I was a child towering over me, then again when he died, he was a little old man.”
“I can understand that. How had your mother hurt him?”
“Several months after his death, I got curious. So, I asked Chet to do a little diggin’ for me. I figured I wouldn’t be able to get anywhere. He found out for me that dad was the one who had her put in the hospital the first time. When Chet gave me the paper work, he told me that dad had sworn him to secrecy. Dad showed him his arm and it was blue from his elbow to his wrist. Mom did that to him.”
Esther wanted to cry now. There was never a call to be mean to a senior citizen.
“Mom cursed me to where a fly wouldn’t land on me. She just knew I was the one who had her put in the hospital. I tried to get dad to come and stay with us then. But he wouldn’t leave the house unattended. So I went to the store and made sure he had food he knew how to fix and would eat.”
Esther took her scarf off and wrapped it around his naked hand.
“Honey, what are you doing?”
“Your hand has to be cold. I’m just protecting it.” She smiled.
With his other hand, he raised her chin so that he could look into her eyes. No one had ever showed him genuine concern before. Except Chet, this was different. He kissed her. As he did, he guided his hand around the back of her neck. It was amazingly warm.
“Tell me about your brother.”
“I don’t know him. I left when he was eight. When I first came back, I tried to reach out to him. But I failed. I just didn’t know how. We are so different.”
“Did you ever talk to your mom about that?”
“I tried. All she would say was, ‘I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I was so young when I had you.’ So I stopped her and told her that for the most part, I’m happy with me. I just wanted to know why there was such a different style of raising children. Why he was the chosen one and I was the dog? ‘I was so young.’ She said. I never brought it up again.”
“Did your dad pass away 10 years ago?”
“No.” He took a deep breath. “Dad’s been gone,” he thought for a moment, “21 years. I hadn’t realized that till just now. Larry’s 6. I guess the crap just hit the fan then.”
Her heart broke for him.
He sat there for a long time. Though the sun hadn’t shined this day, the sky was getting grayer. “I think it’s going to snow again.” Esther reported.
He finally looked up. “I believe you might be right.” He looked at her, caressing her face. God how he thought she was beautiful. This woman had sat here in the cold and snow; listening to him pour out his heart about his family. It was possible he loved her? He had told Chet he thought he might. He knew it was possible. And yes, he did. He was in love.
It was beautiful. No. It was sad. No. It was both.
I am a fan of science fiction. In the 4th or 5th grade, we read ‘All Summer in a Day’ by Ray Bradbury. I think this started me down the sci-fi trail. Listen to it. Watch it. Enjoy it. Try to write it. But that’s a different story.
The writers may not have intended some of the parallels that I draw from their material. But isn’t that one of the beautiful things about the mind? Point A; an episode of Dr. Who lands me smack in the middle of point B; Testimony Tuesday for Advent.
Ashildr: “It was beautiful.”
Dr. Who: “No. It was sad.”
Ashildr: “No. It was both.”
In the scene between Dr. Who and Ashildr, Ashildr is sitting at the end of time at the end of the universe watching the stars die.
I can imagine what you’re thinking. Jolene’s nuts. Hmmmm, maybe.
“It was beautiful.”
“No. It was sad.”
“No. It was both.”
Knowing what we know. Having read all the things we have read. The birth of Jesus Christ my Lord; my Savior, it was beautiful. It was sad. It was both.
This marvelous story of God born in human form is beautiful. God born to a virgin. Perfection in an imperfect world. It’s sad because we know he was born to die. The perfect lamb. To give us grace ever lasting. Fill us with the Holy Spirit for the asking. It’s BOTH – because he loved us so much.
I don’t need to sit in a bubble at the beginning of time and watch his birth or at the end of time to watch his death. We can sit with the Bible (the bread of life)- the word of God and read about his physical beginning and his physical end.
“It was beautiful.”
“No. It was sad.”
“No. It was both.”
~
The Bible
Read: the book of Luke
Isaiah 53:12
Psalm 22:7-8
Psalm 22:16-18
John 3:16
BBC – Dr. Who Series 9 Episode 11
Hear the wind? My tassels blow
to and fro.
Hear the tones?
Cold enough to chill the bones.
A gust here. A gust there.
Be still? Do I dare?
You run and hide.
But I must stay outside.
Cold wind, all night will blow
bringing with it a chance of snow.
Jesus vs St. Nicholas (Santa Claus)
I have been reading the work of a poet that goes by the pen name ‘just a guy’. A recent poem titled ‘Parade’, he is able to stand on his back porch and watch his towns Christmas parade go by. At the end of the parade is Santa. That jolly man in a red suit. ‘I opened my back door
and shouted at that fat jolly man
“You’re not real!”
He couldn’t hear me
The firetrucks were all honking.
He just kept waving to the children who ran after him
with wide eyed wonderment.’
If everything I’ve read about St. Nicholas is true, he was a good person. ‘Much admired for his piety and kindness, St. Nicholas became the subject of many legends. It is said that he gave away all of his inherited wealth and traveled the countryside helping the poor and sick. One of the best-known St. Nicholas stories is the time he saved three poor sisters from being sold into slavery or prostitution by their father by providing them with a dowry so that they could be married.’
Jesus gave gifts as well. He made the lame to leap, the deaf to speak, and the blind to see. He chased away demons and calmed a raging sea.
So why does it seem Santa, (Today, Santa Claus is now a common image of Christmas who still carries on the spirit of giving that St. Nicholas started centuries ago and his likeness is known across the world.) has won the popularity contest? In one word, marketing. Santa sells. Just as DeBeers did a marketing campaign that men should spend 10% of their income on an engagement ring. Satan has used marketing to sweep Jesus under the rug at Christmas.
What sells better than someone who gives you presents? You don’t have to do a thing. Santa spews presents from his sack. You can even sit on his lap and ask for what you want.
Jesus doesn’t sell well. He has some strings attached in the form of expectations. ‘To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God” (Micah 6:8). Mark 12:30-31 NIV “30 Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ 31 The second is this: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no commandment greater than these.” Just a couple examples.
And Jesus had some hard truths for us as well. You know the golden rule; do unto others as you’d wish them do to you. Matthew 7:12 NIV “12 So in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you, for this sums up the Law and the Prophets.” “Lord, how oft shall my brother sin against me, and I forgive him?” Jesus responded, “I say not unto thee, Until seven times: but, Until seventy times seven” (Matthew 18:21–22). Just a couple examples.
When we accept the free gift of Jesus, we have to do all the work. Salvation is free for the asking. The Bible expects us to use our gift, share it. But with Santa, all we have to do is exist.
Santa brings temporary joy. From the poem above, can you just see all the children ‘who ran after him’? After Christmas Santa is gone. Until July. Jesus lives on. Year round.
The Bible
https://www.history.com/topics/christmas/santa-claus
https://www.vintageisthenewold.com/game-pedia/is-santa-more-popular-than-jesus#:~:text=Despite%20the%20proliferation%20of%20Santa,wield%20more%20influence%20than%20Jesus.
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