A Christmas Story For These Trouble Times
As the Solstice draws nigh and the winds grow bitter, I recall a conversation I had last year with my dear friend, Mrs. Miller. An ex-Carmelite nun now well into her 70’s, this remarkable woman has done everything from a stint as Bob Hope’s social secretary to founding what became an uber-exclusive private school in Westside LA. Like many of us, she escaped the crush of humanity in the city for the more expansive solitude of the countryside. Unlike many of us, she has taken her early religious vows seriously—and kept them faithfully throughout her life.
When she was my son’s fifth-grade teacher at our little local K-8 school, she had the kids transform their drab classroom into a pharaoh’s tomb for the semester while they studied Ancient Egypt. Gauze-wrapped dolls became mummies. The kids made cardboard crowns, milk-bottle amphorae, a labyrinthine maze. The classroom was remarkable, magical, history come-to-life; or in this case, a splendid imperial death. The 10-year-olds in this little country schoolhouse were enthralled, but some of their parents, alas, were not.
Our local school board had her removed for teaching the children “Satan worship”; ancient myths apparently threatening the evangelical mythology of the local board members. In disgust, she and her husband sold their few remaining worldly possessions, bought an old pickup truck and started a mission.
Every morning they get up, pack the truck full of donated bottles of juice and water, toothbrushes, clean socks, stationary and stamps, seasonal clothing. Then they drive into the Central Valley and make the rounds of the underpasses, the orchards and fields along the highways, the railroad tracks and parish parking lots, to bring supplies to the “blessed ones” (as she calls her flock,) who make their homes in America’s hidden places. When they are not bringing comfort, writing letters or delivering medicines, they are begging, cajoling local citizens and merchants for donations.
They have done this for the last twelve years.
Some of Mrs. Miller’s blessed ones have been living in their respective spots for years, while some are literally only a few days from death. Many are veterans of our military incursions into Iraq, or druggies in the last stages of HIV/AIDS. More than a few have a history of violence. She and her husband know and love them all, caring for them as they would their own children. More than any other people I know, these two live an authentically Christian life of poverty and service to the poor and the needy. Whenever I can, I stuff an envelope with whatever loose currency is hanging around my house and sneak it into their big rural mailbox out on the creek road. Although I do so anonymously, we both know I’m not fooling anybody, and I finally had to ask her to please stop writing me thank you notes—and save the stamps for her ministry.
Last year at Christmas time, as I struggled to come to grips with my newly disfiguring injuries, Mrs. Miller sent me a lovely card of encouragement with $25 in cash tucked inside. I, of course, sent it right back to her, along with a note telling her I would sooner gnaw off my own elbows (a improbability only compounded by my lack of teeth,) than take a penny from her mission. That’s why she had called.
She told me her blessed ones had been so worried about me after hearing of the bear attack, that they got together and took up a collection. For ME! And that these dear desperate, appallingly-deprived people had been praying for me, the godless humanist, and for my swift recovery.
Well. That was humbling. For a few moments I sat there stunned.
Then I hung up the phone, looked out onto my enormously self-indulgent rose garden, still blooming in spite of the winter’s first snow, and I wept for a good long while.
For myself? For the compassion of the downtrodden? For the cruel cosmic irony of it all?
Who can truly know these things? All I did know was that the tears I’d been holding back for months were finally spilling over in one cathartic rush of self-pity, and that I would never ever again doubt the human capacity for self-delusion. All this time I’d been thinking they were the ones whose lives had been irrevocably screwed up….
I went back inside and put another log on the fire.
Dear HBB, in case you haven’t noticed, it’s c-c-cold out these days. Even holed-up here inside my cozy little house, snug in a turtleneck and sweater in front of the fireplace, it’s cold. As reduced as my circumstances may be at the moment, I’m still hugely grateful for walls against the winter winds and the miracle of hot water on tap. As we relax in our leather recliners, TV remotes in hand, it’s all-too easy to forget that what most of us consider simple necessities, are amenities beyond the reach of nearly a million Americans—with an estimated 1.5 million more expected to join them in the next two years.
Imagine for a moment that your life has gone horribly wrong. Whether for reasons of your own stupidity or of malicious fate, your house is history, your family, long-since abandoned. Your car is dead, you’ve got medical problems that you can’t get fixed and now you find yourself camped out in an orchard along Hwy 58 in this awful rotten weather. Or freezing behind a dumpster in a parking lot. Or huddled in a cardboard nest under an overpass with the icy mud dripping onto your bedding. Don’t think it can’t happen to you, because it can–faster than you can possibly imagine. Not all the folks who find themselves homeless “had it coming.” Sometimes life just works out that way.
As we prepare for holidays with our friends and our families at hand, please consider gathering up your spare stash…those crumpled ones and fives lying around the house, that leftover savings account that’s just sitting there doing nothing because you haven’t closed it out; or maybe the contents of your coin jar…and sending it to this saintly woman? Mrs. Miller is out there right now seeking out the most miserable among us to offer a warm coat, some dry socks, a pair of mittens for bleeding fingers, maybe a blanket and a high-energy snack, life-saving medicines donated by sympathetic clinics, and always a kind word. Maybe you don’t agree with what she’s doing—not everyone believes that the wretched among us should be sustained—and she is frequently harassed by county officials who would rather “those people” just move on to someone else’s jurisdiction and be gone for good.
But Mrs. Miller is our conscience, and if for no other reason than that, she deserves our pittance-if not our whole Christmas kitty. If you are in a position to help, please consider doing so? Thanks so much.
Mrs. Miller. c/o General Delivery. Sand Canyon, Caliente, CA. 93518
I’ll be taking a break for a few weeks while I undergo this next surgery. Be back as soon as I can.
ahansen
