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advent journal: after word

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You know she lived for years, many years
after he left – and she moved from Galilee,
following those who had pledged to care
for her. Maybe it was easier to not live
in the same land where he had parabled
and miracled, healed and helped. After
he was gone, they still came to town
asking to see the house where he was
born and she would have to tell them –
again — they were in the wrong place.
Maybe it mattered most to be with
friends who knew the stories, who had
lived through the glory and the grief,
and yet, when they knocked on the door
they asked, “What did you do today?”

Peace,
Milton

P. S. — There’s a new recipe.

advent journal: change the world for $25

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I wish I could remember how I first heard of Kiva.org.

It was probably because someone took time to write or send an email telling me about micro loans and what they can do in developing countries. Kiva began because a couple, Jessica and Matt Flannery, listened to the voices that gathered around them. She heard Dr. Muhammad Yunus speak – he was the founder of the Grameen Bank, a pioneer in microfinance, and the winner of the Nobel Peace Prize. After a visit to Africa, the two began to talk about how they could bring together what they knew about the Internet, what they had seen in Africa, and what they believed could happen to make a difference in the lives of people around the world who live in poverty. You can read their story here. They said they came to three realizations:

  1. We are more connected to the developing world than we realize. Even when he was in San Francisco and she in rural Africa seemingly worlds away, Matt could reach Jessica on her cell phone as though she were one block away. Distance means little in the world of communication today.
  2. The poor are very entrepreneurial. While the profit margins may be very different, the spirit of entrepreneurship is as strong among the poor of the developing world as it is in Silicon Valley.
  3. Stories connect people in a powerful way. As they listened to story after story of a fishmonger who needed enough money to buy directly from the fishermen at the lake, or a farmer who needed to buy a better breed of cow to produce more milk, Matt and Jessica knew that any of their friends back home would want to support these business ventures if they also heard their stories. With each story came a human connection as similarities were identified, making an African entrepreneur someone easier to relate to despite differences in language, culture or levels of wealth.

In March of 2005, they made their first seven loans, for a total of $3500, in Uganda. By September, those loans were repaid. Word began to get out and the organization began to grow exponentially. In March of this year – only three years later – Kiva loaned its 25 millionth dollar. Most of those loans are made $25 at a time.

Ginger and I made our first loan in March of 2007. I wish I could remember how we learned about it. We, along with several others, loaned our twenty-five bucks to Maria Guadalupe Martínez Magdaleno in Mexico to help her buy a cart so she could take the hamburgers and tacos she made at home to the nearby factories and thereby grow her business. She paid us back by September. We took the money and loaned it to Angela Kamenge in Tanzania to expand her poultry business. I’ve also taken some of the money from the sales of A Faraway Christmas to help Sok Nea open a grocery store in Cambodia and the Mastula Kagere Group who sell mattresses in Uganda.

My point is this: you can help. You can become a lender and help people all around the world. Pick the place, pick the kind of business that interests you, but please go pick one or twenty-seven of them and become a banker to the world. You can also give the gift of lending to someone else. Last December Kiva raised over two million dollars in gift certificates.

Change somebody’s world for twenty-five bucks. Where else are you going to get a deal like that?

Peace,
Milton

advent journal: index of first lines

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In the midst of my waiting tonight, I began going through the first lines of songs I love and found this poem.

Index of First Lines

I pulled into Nazareth was feeling ‘bout half past dead
I don’t want to hear a love song
doctor my eyes have seen the years and the slow parade of tears
headlights are flashing down the highway
I wonder if we’re gonna ever get home
a look at you all see the love there that’s sleeping
when you’re down and troubled and you need a helping hand
keep a fire burning in your eye pay attention to the open sky
you you along the road must have a code that you can live by
you come a-walking with a scar on your soul
taking too much too lightly
you with the sad eyes don’t be discouraged
there’s a river of sorrow in my soul
don’t the hours grow shorter as the days go by
there are the ones you call friends
there are the ones you call late at night
another turning point a fork stuck in the road
people get ready there’s a train a-comin’
you can play the game and act out the part
baby I’ve been searching like everybody else
in the middle of late last night I was sitting on a curb
where have all my friends gone? they’ve all disappeared
like a bird on a wire like a drunk in a midnight choir
I will remember you will you remember me

when the road gets dark and you can no longer see
in every heart there is a room a sanctuary safe and strong
didn’t say we wouldn’t hurt anymore
people that are sad they wear a frown
it’s coming on Christmas and they’re cutting down trees
I heard was there was a secret chord
that david played and it pleased the Lord
am I young enough to believe in revolution
when it’s dark outside you’ve got to carry the light
the waltzing fool he’s got lights in his fingers
there ain’t nobody asked to be born
shut it down and call this road a day
we’re living in a time of inconvenience
you come home late and you come home early
we are swimming with the snakes at the bottom of the well
all the unsaid words that I might be thinking
the presence of your absence follows me
something in your eyes makes me want to lose myself
here we go again another round of blues
it was all I could do to keep from crying
oh play me a blues song and fade down the lights
so many years so many hardships
just when every ray of hope was gone
tell anybody that ain’t got nobody somebody’s coming
when you start if you exist God believes in you
I can hear her heartbeat from a thousand miles

Peace,
Milton

advent journal: keep me in your heart

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We were scattered across the sanctuary, twenty-five or so in a room that will hold three hundred, the candles covering the Communion table offering warm light as the day surrendered to the darkness. In front of the altar was a small table with one place setting – plate, glass, coffee cup, napkin, silverware – and a basket full of place cards. Each of us entered and found a seat with room for the sorrow we had brought with us and we sang and prayed and talked about who and what had been lost this year. Tonight we had our Blue Christmas.

After we had prayed and sung “In the Bleak Midwinter” and listened to a stirring version of “It Is Well With My Soul” by our music director and organist, Ginger explained why we had place cards.

Write the names of those people or those things that will not be with you this Christmas and then, when the music starts, bring your card and place it on the table.

I wrote my grandmother’s name (she died this year) and my aunt’s (she’s been gone a long time now), Hannah and Phoebe (Schnauzers I still miss), and then I began to name people who are still living but now are far away since we moved. The last name I wrote was my father-in-law’s because even though he is here he is not. While we were in the service, he slept in Ginger’s office because he can’t sit in church anymore. And he loved going to church.

I put my card on the table first because I was to sing while the others came forward. The song was Warren Zevon’s “Keep Me in Your Heart for Awhile,” from his album The Wind, which he finished recording just weeks before he died of cancer.

Shadows are falling and I’m running out of breath
Keep me in your heart for a while
If I leave you it doesn’t mean I love you any less
Keep me in your heart for a while

When you get up in the morning and you see that crazy sun
Keep me in your heart for a while
There’s a train leaving nightly called when all is said and done
Keep me in your heart for a while

Sha-la la-la-la la-la-li li-lo
Keep me in your heart for a while
Sha-la la-la-la la-la-li li-lo
Keep me in your heart for a while

Sometimes when you’re doing simple things around the house
Maybe you’ll think of me and smile
You know I’m tied to you like the buttons on your blouse
Keep me in your heart for a while

Hold me in your thoughts, take me to your dreams
Touch me as I fall into view
When the winter comes keep the fires lit
And I will be right next to you

Engine driver’s headed north to Pleasant Stream
Keep me in your heart for a while
These wheels keep turning but they’re running out of steam
Keep me in your heart for a while

Sha-la la-la-la la-la-li li-lo
Keep me in your heart for a while
Sha-la la-la-la la-la-li li-lo
Keep me in your heart for a while
Keep me in your heart for a while

We prayed together and then sang

O little town of Bethlehem how still we see thee lie
above thy deep and dreamless sleep the silent stars go by
yet in thy dark streets shineth an everlasting light
the hopes and fears of all the years are met in thee tonight

The service ended with Ginger’s inviting people to stay as long as they wished and to leave in silence when it was time for them to go. We left still carrying the losses we brought with us (how can a loss be so heavy?), yet our loads were lightened because we were all carrying our losses together. We were keeping each other in our hearts.

My friend Lindsey sent me a Henri Nouwen quote today in response to yesterday’s post:

Prayer for others… is the very beat of a compassionate heart. To pray for a friend who is ill, for a student who is depressed, for a teacher who is in conflict; for people in prisons, in hospitals, on battlefields; for those who are victims of injustice, who are hungry, poor, without shelter; for those who risk their career, their health, and even their life in struggle for social justice; for leaders of church and state, to pray for all these people is not a futile effort to influence God’s will, but a hospitable gesture by which we invite our neighbors into the center of our hearts. When we come before God with the needs of the world, the healing love of the Holy Spirit that touches us touches with the same power all those whom we bring before him.

We have all lost and we are found when we share the sorrow and keep each other close. Tonight felt closer to Christmas than anywhere else I’ve been this season.

Peace,
Milton

advent journal: healing in his wings

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Over most of my adult life in faith, I’ve been fortunate to go to churches small enough to still take one of the Sundays in Advent for the Christmas Pageant, though the word pageant always brings a smile to my face. I can’t help but wonder which of the magi will win the gown competition and if any of the shepherds will do something other than shear a sheep for their talent. Vocabulary aside, something about the parade of bath-robed shepherds helps Jesus to be born anew year after year.

The first year Ginger was in Winchester, she had a number of the young people taking part. One of the girls, who had not grown up in church, asked to be King Herod. As the rehearsal continued and came to her scene, she broke character in the middle of her speech and said, “Wait a minute! Herod’s a bad guy.”

My favorite moment in Marshfield each year came when the angels appeared to the shepherds. The pulpit at the church was a wall of wood across the front, creating a ministerial fortress of solitude behind it. The angels, always some of our youngest and most enthusiastic participants, would jump up from behind the wall holding stars above their heads, their faces beaming, as we all sang, “Joy to the World.”

The pageant here in Durham is an Advent one, which, I’ve learned, means everyone shows up except Jesus. We had shepherds and angels and the star and the wise men who all gathered around Joseph and Mary, but she was still pregnant when we headed out for coffee hour. The days have not yet been accomplished; we still have to wait for Jesus.

I thought about our pageant several times yesterday and today as I have been with my father-in-law who has Alzheimer’s. I thought about it because I feel like one of those little towel-headed kids, all dressed up for the big event and all I’m doing is waiting. Ginger and my mother-in-law spent a couple of days together and I was with Reuben, who is to the core of his being one of the most gentle and hopeful people I know. In other years, we would have spent the drive talking about what he saw on the news, which he watched voraciously, or he would have asked me questions about my job and about Durham. Instead, he wondered if it was going to snow (because he thinks we still live in Boston) and asked about every thirty minutes what time Ginger and Rachel were going to come home. Today, I looked in his face as he sat across from me at lunch and his eyes looked vacant, as though he were fading like a face in an old photograph, except it was happening right in front of me.

As we drove yesterday, I was also waiting for word on my brother’s surgery to remove a tumor from his spinal cord. About ten o’clock last night I got news that was about as good as it could get: they were able to repair the disc, remove the tumor, and all indications were the tumor was benign (we’ll have to wait a couple of days for the official pathology report). More than one person said it was “an answer to prayer. God is good.”

It was and God is. I prayed the tumor would not be cancer, and that it would be as uncomplicated at surgery on one’s spinal cord can be. And I also prayed that Reuben wouldn’t get Alzheimer’s and that he wouldn’t disappear as quickly as he is. My brother is going to get to go on with life relatively unscathed – at least from this and my father-in-law is going to continue to lose his life incrementally. Holding both of them in my heart, I’m hesitant to say God showed up somehow and healed Miller because then I’m left with Reuben not being so fortunate.

When we finally do put a baby in the manger, we will sing

Christ, the highest heaven adored
Christ the everlasting Lord
Light and life to all he brings
Risen with healing in his wings

The last phrase always gets me: with healing in his wings. Both the beauty and mystery stir my heart. I love those words and I’m not sure what they mean; I only know they touch me at a place of deep yearning and hope. Run a Google search for the phrase and you’ll find it means a lot of different things to different people. When I look at the person the baby grew to be, the healing wings he sprouted have as much or more to do with the grace and forgiveness he showed people like Zacchaeus or the adulterous woman as they do with those who were physically healed.

God is good and would still be if Miller had gotten bad news about the tumor or had been left paralyzed by the surgery. God is still good even though Reuben is disappearing before our eyes. It was after Horatio Spafford saw all of his daughters die in a shipwreck that he wrote

When peace like a river attendeth my way
and sorrow like sea billows roll;
Whatever my lot thou has taught me to say
It is well, it is well with my soul

George Matheson was rejected by his fiancée when he told her he was going blind because she didn’t want to spend her life taking care of him. And he wrote

O Love that will not let me go,
I rest my weary soul in thee;
I give thee back the life I owe,
That in thine ocean depths its flow
May richer, fuller be.

O light that followest all my way,
I yield my flickering torch to thee;
My heart restores its borrowed ray,
That in thy sunshine’s blaze its day
May brighter, fairer be.

O Joy that seekest me through pain,
I cannot close my heart to thee;
I trace the rainbow through the rain,
And feel the promise is not vain,
That morn shall tearless be.

O Cross that liftest up my head,
I dare not ask to fly from thee;
I lay in dust life’s glory dead,
And from the ground there blossoms red
Life that shall endless be

What these hymn writers know is healing is something more profound than the absence of disease or the release of pain. I’m not talking metaphorically here. My mother-in-law needs healing for her heart learning to live with the husband she is losing. My brother’s healing will go beyond the surgery to include learning how to live in a way other than his gazillion hour-a-week schedule that was killing him long before they found the tumor. Whatever our circumstances, we all need healing.

And together, we wait.

Peace,
Milton

advent journal: don’t travel alone

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After I got off work last night I drove to Asheville to meet Ginger and her parents who had driven from Birmingham. We met in the mountains because our Christmas present to Rachel, Ginger’s mother, was a couple of days with her daughter to see the Biltmore Mansion at Christmas and to be able to relax and know that Reuben, her husband who has Alzheimer’s, would be taken care of. He and I drove back to Durham today and are hanging out – along with all three of the Schnauzers – while the women wander in the mountains.

As we drove back today, my brother Miller was having surgery to repair a herniated disc and to remove a tumor from his spinal cord. I got word about nine o’clock that the surgery was a success, the doctor is confident the tumor is benign, and Miller is resting comfortably. I thought a lot about both Miller and Reuben as I was driving, one with a tumor that scared us all to death but that could be removed and the other who is slowly disappearing and none of us can stop it.

It was after ten when I walked home from the restaurant to get ready for my late night road trip. I decided to make a quick CD mix of traveling companions. One of the songs I chose I hadn’t heard in awhile, but pulled me somehow. I must have pushed the repeat button six or seven times because the Indigo Girls seemed to be singing my song, “The Wood Song”:

The thin horizon of a plan is almost clear
My friends and I have had a tough time
Bruising our brains hard up against change
All the old dogs and the magician
Now I see were in the boat in two by twos
Only the heart that we have for a tool we could use
And the very close quarters are hard to get used to
Love weighs the hull down with its weight

But the wood is tired and the wood is old
And well make it fine if the weather holds
But if the weather holds we’ll have missed the point
That’s where I need to go

No way construction of this tricky plan
Was built by other than a greater hand
With a love that passes all out understanding
Watching closely over this journey
Yeah but what it takes to cross the great divide
Seems more than all the courage I can muster up inside
Although we get to have some answers when we reach the other side
The prize is always worth the rocky ride

But the wood is tired and the wood is old
And well make it fine if the weather holds
But if the weather holds we’ll have missed the point
That’s where I need to go

Sometimes I ask to sneak a closer look
Skip to the final chapter of the book
And then maybe steer us clear from some of the pain it took
To get us where we are this far yeah
But the question drowns in its futility
And even I have got to laugh at me
No one gets to miss the storm of what will be
Just holding on for the ride

The wood is tired and the wood is old
Well make it fine if the weather holds
But if the weather holds we’ll have missed the point
That’s where I need to go

It’s getting late here and I can’t get Reuben to go to bed because he doesn’t remember Rachel and Ginger are spending the night away and I think he’s waiting for them to come home. Lola, Gracie, and Ella, our little canine carriers of compassion, are snoozing all around him. I’ve tried to get him to go to bed, but I don’t know much else to do but let him stay in the recliner. He feels lost and neither of us have a map; best I can do is to make sure he knows he’s not traveling alone.

And to my best to remember the same thing.

Peace,
Milton

advent journal: what it means to be family

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Tonight after work I’m driving to Asheville to meet Ginger, who is driving from Birmingham with her parents and our other two Schnauzers who have lived in Birmingham since we moved south. Originally, they were only going to stay a month, but they were so helpful to my father-in-law as he lives with Alzheimer’s that we have left them there. I will bring Reuben, my father-in-law, and Lola and Gracie back home with me while Ginger gives her mother a few days away as our Christmas present. (I wrote a poem about him here.)

When I get home tomorrow afternoon, I will spend the evening here, with Reuben, waiting for word about my brother’s surgery to remove a tumor from his spinal cord. The surgery will not be over until about nine tomorrow night. I can’t get to Dallas because I need to be here. Somehow, between Dallas and Asheville and Durham, we are all together, thank God.

This is what it means to be family.

Peace,
Milton

advent journal: what the heart sees

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Here in Brasher-Cunninghamland, birthdays are full of surprises. I never know what the day will hold (or even the night before) until it arrives, and even then it unfolds a few hours at a time. When we pulled up in front of the Playmakers Repertory Company to see The Little Prince, one of my all-time favorite stories. The play was beautifully set, creatively presented, and wonderfully true to the book. I smiled when I heard my favorite line, spoken to the Prince by the fox:

One sees clearly only with the heart. Anything essential is invisible to the eyes.

But I’m getting ahead of myself.

My celebration kicked off with an evening of bowling with friends on Thursday night, followed by Mexican food. As though rented shoes and rellenos might not be enough, Friday started with time to relax and then lunch at Mami Nori’s Peruvian Rotisserie Chicken, which continues our tradition of Ginger taking me to eat some sort of ethnic food I’ve not had before. According to the family that runs the restaurant, the pollo a la braza is Peruvian street food, cooked over a wood fire. I had it with tostones (plantain chips) and yucca fries. The meal was made complete by Mami Nora and the fam singing “Happy Birthday” to me and giving me a piece of tres leches cake.

Our evening began by stopping by to help celebrate the sixty-fifth birthday of a friend from church and then we went to the play. After the theater, we went to the Magnolia Grill for desseert (thanks to an old gift certificate) where I had tiramisu waffles with espresso ice cream with chocolate chunks and caramel sauce. I also had a cup of coffee and, since it was my birthday, a glass of bourbon that was old enough to vote. But we weren’t through yet. From there we headed west on I-85, at eleven o’clock and stopped at the Steak n Shake in Burlington, North Carolina, which happened to be peopled with the youth group from Hampton Baptist Church led by our friends Charles and Jennifer Smith, who also parent our godchildren, Ally and Samuel. The last minutes of my birthday passed in the company of friends, even as the day had been spotted with calls and notes from friends all over the place.

I didn’t get much sleep, but my heart sees clearly: I am loved, I am loved, I am really loved. And I am deeply grateful.

Peace
Milton

advent journal: the joy book club

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Ginger did two things for me today to begin my birthday celebration a day early: she arranged for us to go bowling with friends (isn’t 52 the Rented Shoe Birthday?) and she gave me the afternoon to read. Between cooking and blogging, I haven’t been reading much, so an afternoon with a book was amazing, as was my choice of novel to accompany me.

Earlier this year, my friend Joy Jordan-Lake published Blue Hole Back Home. I’ve written about Joy’s writing before here and here. She is a thoughtful and expressive writer in both style and content. Her book, Why Jesus Makes Me Nervous: Ten Alaming Words of Faith is one I continue to reread because I continue to find new things. Blue Hole is my first experience reading Joy’s fiction. She’s good at novels, too.

The story is narrated by Shelby Lenoir Maynard, or Turtle, who tells the story of her fifteenth year in Pisgah Ridge, North Carolina when a Sri Lankan family moved to the all-white town and became part of her pack of friends. The story pulls in faith, race, hope, courage, cowardice, love, friendship, adolescence, swimming, dogs, Southern culture, and the Boston Red Sox.

Here’s a better description:

When a fifteen-year-old Sri Lankan girl moves to the all-white Pisgah Ridge, Shelby Lenoir Maynard invites her to join Shelby and her brother and her brother’s friends for a swim at the Blue Hole-less in a gesture of bold social reform than because it is simply too hot to think straight. Exotic, mysterious and fiercely independent, the new girl throws the entire town into turmoil. When two different members of The Pack, as Shelby and her brother and her brother’s friends call themselves, begin exhibiting interest in the new girl and a third hints he may be conspiring with the local Klan, the Pack itself threatens to splinter. Throughout the summer, as the town’s hostilities steadily increase along with the heat, the Blue Hole remains the teenagers’ only place of real peace-and even that has its limits. Eventually, the tensions outside the Blue Hole erupt in betrayals, cross-burnings and a deadly explosion. Ultimately, though, Blue Hole Back Home is a story not only of the devastating effects of racial hatred and cowardice, but more centrally, a celebration of courage, confrontation, mercy and healing.

The story is powerful and the language is beautiful.

Here’s what I hope you will do. Go here and order the book, or go to your local bookseller and ask them to get it for you if it’s not on the shelf. In a world where Sarah Palin and Joe the Plumber are getting big book deals, someone who has poured heart and soul into her prose deserves to be noticed and rewarded for her brilliant effort.

Join the Joy Book Club. Please.

Peace,
Milton

advent journal: the gift of the magi

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On this day in 1906, O. Henry published the short story, “The Gift of the Magi,” which is a favorite at our house. In honor of the day and the story, here is the story.

One dollar and eighty-seven cents. That was all. And sixty cents of it was in pennies. Pennies saved one and two at a time by bulldozing the grocer and the vegetable man and the butcher until one’s cheeks burned with the silent imputation of parsimony that such close dealing implied. Three times Della counted it. One dollar and eighty- seven cents. And the next day would be Christmas.

There was clearly nothing to do but flop down on the shabby little couch and howl. So Della did it. Which instigates the moral reflection that life is made up of sobs, sniffles, and smiles, with sniffles predominating.

While the mistress of the home is gradually subsiding from the first stage to the second, take a look at the home. A furnished flat at $8 per week. It did not exactly beggar description, but it certainly had that word on the lookout for the mendicancy squad.

In the vestibule below was a letter-box into which no letter would go, and an electric button from which no mortal finger could coax a ring. Also appertaining thereunto was a card bearing the name “Mr. James Dillingham Young.”

The “Dillingham” had been flung to the breeze during a former period of prosperity when its possessor was being paid $30 per week. Now, when the income was shrunk to $20, though, they were thinking seriously of contracting to a modest and unassuming D. But whenever Mr. James Dillingham Young came home and reached his flat above he was called “Jim” and greatly hugged by Mrs. James Dillingham Young, already introduced to you as Della. Which is all very good.

Della finished her cry and attended to her cheeks with the powder rag. She stood by the window and looked out dully at a gray cat walking a gray fence in a gray backyard. Tomorrow would be Christmas Day, and she had only $1.87 with which to buy Jim a present. She had been saving every penny she could for months, with this result. Twenty dollars a week doesn’t go far. Expenses had been greater than she had calculated. They always are. Only $1.87 to buy a present for Jim. Her Jim. Many a happy hour she had spent planning for something nice for him. Something fine and rare and sterling–something just a little bit near to being worthy of the honor of being owned by Jim.

There was a pier-glass between the windows of the room. Perhaps you have seen a pier-glass in an $8 flat. A very thin and very agile person may, by observing his reflection in a rapid sequence of longitudinal strips, obtain a fairly accurate conception of his looks. Della, being slender, had mastered the art.

Suddenly she whirled from the window and stood before the glass. her eyes were shining brilliantly, but her face had lost its color within twenty seconds. Rapidly she pulled down her hair and let it fall to its full length.

Now, there were two possessions of the James Dillingham Youngs in which they both took a mighty pride. One was Jim’s gold watch that had been his father’s and his grandfather’s. The other was Della’s hair. Had the queen of Sheba lived in the flat across the airshaft, Della would have let her hair hang out the window some day to dry just to depreciate Her Majesty’s jewels and gifts. Had King Solomon been the janitor, with all his treasures piled up in the basement, Jim would have pulled out his watch every time he passed, just to see him pluck at his beard from envy.

So now Della’s beautiful hair fell about her rippling and shining like a cascade of brown waters. It reached below her knee and made itself almost a garment for her. And then she did it up again nervously and quickly. Once she faltered for a minute and stood still while a tear or two splashed on the worn red carpet.

On went her old brown jacket; on went her old brown hat. With a whirl of skirts and with the brilliant sparkle still in her eyes, she fluttered out the door and down the stairs to the street.

Where she stopped the sign read: “Mne. Sofronie. Hair Goods of All Kinds.” One flight up Della ran, and collected herself, panting. Madame, large, too white, chilly, hardly looked the “Sofronie.”

“Will you buy my hair?” asked Della.

“I buy hair,” said Madame. “Take yer hat off and let’s have a sight at the looks of it.”

Down rippled the brown cascade.

“Twenty dollars,” said Madame, lifting the mass with a practised hand.

“Give it to me quick,” said Della.

Oh, and the next two hours tripped by on rosy wings. Forget the hashed metaphor. She was ransacking the stores for Jim’s present.

She found it at last. It surely had been made for Jim and no one else. There was no other like it in any of the stores, and she had turned all of them inside out. It was a platinum fob chain simple and chaste in design, properly proclaiming its value by substance alone and not by meretricious ornamentation–as all good things should do. It was even worthy of The Watch. As soon as she saw it she knew that it must be Jim’s. It was like him. Quietness and value–the description applied to both. Twenty-one dollars they took from her for it, and she hurried home with the 87 cents. With that chain on his watch Jim might be properly anxious about the time in any company. Grand as the watch was, he sometimes looked at it on the sly on account of the old leather strap that he used in place of a chain.

When Della reached home her intoxication gave way a little to prudence and reason. She got out her curling irons and lighted the gas and went to work repairing the ravages made by generosity added to love. Which is always a tremendous task, dear friends–a mammoth task.

Within forty minutes her head was covered with tiny, close-lying curls that made her look wonderfully like a truant schoolboy. She looked at her reflection in the mirror long, carefully, and critically.

“If Jim doesn’t kill me,” she said to herself, “before he takes a second look at me, he’ll say I look like a Coney Island chorus girl. But what could I do–oh! what could I do with a dollar and eighty- seven cents?”

At 7 o’clock the coffee was made and the frying-pan was on the back of the stove hot and ready to cook the chops.

Jim was never late. Della doubled the fob chain in her hand and sat on the corner of the table near the door that he always entered. Then she heard his step on the stair away down on the first flight, and she turned white for just a moment. She had a habit for saying little silent prayer about the simplest everyday things, and now she whispered: “Please God, make him think I am still pretty.”

The door opened and Jim stepped in and closed it. He looked thin and very serious. Poor fellow, he was only twenty-two–and to be burdened with a family! He needed a new overcoat and he was without gloves.

Jim stopped inside the door, as immovable as a setter at the scent of quail. His eyes were fixed upon Della, and there was an expression in them that she could not read, and it terrified her. It was not anger, nor surprise, nor disapproval, nor horror, nor any of the sentiments that she had been prepared for. He simply stared at her fixedly with that peculiar expression on his face.

Della wriggled off the table and went for him.

“Jim, darling,” she cried, “don’t look at me that way. I had my hair cut off and sold because I couldn’t have lived through Christmas without giving you a present. It’ll grow out again–you won’t mind, will you? I just had to do it. My hair grows awfully fast. Say `Merry Christmas!’ Jim, and let’s be happy. You don’t know what a nice– what a beautiful, nice gift I’ve got for you.”

“You’ve cut off your hair?” asked Jim, laboriously, as if he had not arrived at that patent fact yet even after the hardest mental labor.

“Cut it off and sold it,” said Della. “Don’t you like me just as well, anyhow? I’m me without my hair, ain’t I?”

Jim looked about the room curiously.

“You say your hair is gone?” he said, with an air almost of idiocy.

“You needn’t look for it,” said Della. “It’s sold, I tell you–sold and gone, too. It’s Christmas Eve, boy. Be good to me, for it went for you. Maybe the hairs of my head were numbered,” she went on with sudden serious sweetness, “but nobody could ever count my love for you. Shall I put the chops on, Jim?”

Out of his trance Jim seemed quickly to wake. He enfolded his Della. For ten seconds let us regard with discreet scrutiny some inconsequential object in the other direction. Eight dollars a week or a million a year–what is the difference? A mathematician or a wit would give you the wrong answer. The magi brought valuable gifts, but that was not among them. This dark assertion will be illuminated later on.

Jim drew a package from his overcoat pocket and threw it upon the table.

“Don’t make any mistake, Dell,” he said, “about me. I don’t think there’s anything in the way of a haircut or a shave or a shampoo that could make me like my girl any less. But if you’ll unwrap that package you may see why you had me going a while at first.”

White fingers and nimble tore at the string and paper. And then an ecstatic scream of joy; and then, alas! a quick feminine change to hysterical tears and wails, necessitating the immediate employment of all the comforting powers of the lord of the flat.

For there lay The Combs–the set of combs, side and back, that Della had worshipped long in a Broadway window. Beautiful combs, pure tortoise shell, with jewelled rims–just the shade to wear in the beautiful vanished hair. They were expensive combs, she knew, and her heart had simply craved and yearned over them without the least hope of possession. And now, they were hers, but the tresses that should have adorned the coveted adornments were gone.

But she hugged them to her bosom, and at length she was able to look up with dim eyes and a smile and say: “My hair grows so fast, Jim!”

And them Della leaped up like a little singed cat and cried, “Oh, oh!”

Jim had not yet seen his beautiful present. She held it out to him eagerly upon her open palm. The dull precious metal seemed to flash with a reflection of her bright and ardent spirit.

“Isn’t it a dandy, Jim? I hunted all over town to find it. You’ll have to look at the time a hundred times a day now. Give me your watch. I want to see how it looks on it.”

Instead of obeying, Jim tumbled down on the couch and put his hands under the back of his head and smiled.

“Dell,” said he, “let’s put our Christmas presents away and keep ’em a while. They’re too nice to use just at present. I sold the watch to get the money to buy your combs. And now suppose you put the chops on.”

The magi, as you know, were wise men–wonderfully wise men–who brought gifts to the Babe in the manger. They invented the art of giving Christmas presents. Being wise, their gifts were no doubt wise ones, possibly bearing the privilege of exchange in case of duplication. And here I have lamely related to you the uneventful chronicle of two foolish children in a flat who most unwisely sacrificed for each other the greatest treasures of their house. But in a last word to the wise of these days let it be said that of all who give gifts these two were the wisest. O all who give and receive gifts, such as they are wisest. Everywhere they are wisest. They are the magi.

May we both give and receive generously.

Peace,

Milton