A Christmas Prayer

I’ve just gotten over the flu, but only the icky contagious part of it. I still wear out with absurd ease. After a Christmas party yesterday where all I did – literally – was sit, eat and talk, I still came home and took a nap. So I wasn’t looking forward to making that one last trip to the store before Christmas.

Besides, stores with crowds are next to underwear with bad elastic on my list of things to avoid.

But shop I must and so I braced myself for tired, grumpy cashiers and tired, grumpy shoppers, and marched into the store.

The first person I ran into (almost literally) was an elderly woman who jumped out of my way, laughed, and told me to have a Mericrismas. Then I dodged a young father toting his toddler in one arm and an educational toy in the other. He smiled. I smiled. The toddler squirmed and reached for something less self-improving.

Middle-school boys pushed passed me with a polite, “Excuse me, ma’am”. A teenager moved his cart out of my way before I could ask.

A young woman with matching eyebrow and nose rings rang up my purchases with a cheerful smile. As I got back to my car, a young man came running over and told me in halting English that my front tire was low.

I started thinking about how many of those people (those generous, kind, polite people) get automatically crossed off someone’s list because they fit a predefined category. 

The elderly.

The immigrant.
Minority.
Majority.
Tattoed.
Pierced.
Left. Right.
Muslim. Christian. None-of-the-above.
Language-challenged.
The middle-aged.
The young.

And
I thought about a Birth;
a Baby;
new eyes that see
the Other  
(you and me)  
not as a construct of
filters, fears and
expectations,
but as we are.

Not faceless pieces in a power game or subjects of gossip and memes on social media. Not as a they, but as a you - as in I love you.

So here’s to us,

the Loved.

Here’s to

the misfits,
the conformists,
to you and to me:

May the Birth that

reknit the world
in a long-ago manger                                                  

give us new eyes,
and may we
truly see that Child
in one another.

© Carol Shaw, Christmas 2017