Errant nativity strangers
On the 23rd of December I made a Sour Cream coffee Cake for us to enjoy. It’s something I have made for years even when my kids were young.
Wesley put on Handel’s “Messiah” after we got up this morning, and I instantly needed Sara Lee’s coffee cake and a grapefruit half with sugar sprinkled over it. My Dad would put on that LP and it was what my Mom served every christmas morning.
We have a nativity set that Wesley got a couple of years ago at a Thrift store. When he got it home it was 5 mixed matched figures, a shepherd, a king, a women (perhaps Mary) an Angel and a random Guy.
They seemed to be all separated from their story. They came randomly put together in a new scene, with no apparent unifying story at all, but somehow they work perfectly and unless you look too closely you don’t even notice that they are astray.
We were seated in the movie theater this afternoon (Christmas Day) to see “The Choral”, we had packed grapes, M&Ms, and two slices of my coffee cake in Wesley’s bag. We splurged and got buttered pop corn and a living Coke, it is Christmas after all. Each of the attendees in the theater for that showing were a sundry mix match groups of people.
The movie takes place in 1916 as young men are going off to war, to a most certain death.
Wesley is chowing on the popcorn, and I pulled out the Coffee cake i had made and started in on it. We shared the Coke between us, as well as the popcorn and coffee cake. Wesley turns to me and say, “We are livin’ the life.”
I continue to think about this holiday about the errant nativity strangers placed on our holiday offering. How important each of them are even though they are away from their story, they are connected to it, but dream of something different.
I could not have guessed 10 years ago that I would be sitting in a New York City theater with a man I did not even know back then. That our lives would be glorified by buttered popcorn and coffee cake, and living Coke on a Christmas Day.
I could not have told him that it was everything that I wanted; I did not know. That we had walked away from the stories that were created and placed on new holy ground, unscripted, fragile, and beautifully woven.
Yes, my Love. “We are livin’ the life.”