Abby's Alley

I have no affinity for sappy extra-biblical Christmas songs that portray baby Jesus in pastels through soft camera lenses. I put those songs in the same category as 99 Cents Stores, teacher’s pins, Christmas lawn inflations, Macdonald’s hamburgers, Hallmark’s religious cards, pink stucco, and baby shower games. I can hardly sing a line of some such songs without whispering some snide remark as a tag-line to the person next to me. “The Night is dark, with snow descending, Bells gaily chime a festal song!” You must mean cowbells.  And what the heck is a festal? “His Mother bending over him smiles Upon his face sublime.” Until it was burping time  and then he spit up quite a bit,  and it wasn’t sublime “No warm, white covering in the manger To keep the Babe from bitter cold;” What is this? Siberia?  They didn’t have a cloak?!  What about the swaddling clothes?  Heresy! “Only cobwebs for the stranger From rafter high they hang gray and old.” Oh, I see. 

"The world is fairly studded and strewn with pennies cast broadside from a generous hand. But—and this is the point—who gets excited by a mere penny? If you follow one arrow, if you crouch motionless on a bank to watch a tremulous ripple thrill on the water and are rewarded by the sight of a muskrat kit paddling from its den, will you count that sight a chip of copper only, and go your rueful way? It is a dire poverty indeed when a man is so malnourished and fatigued that he won't stoop to pick up a penny. But if you cultivate a healthy poverty and simplicity, so that finding a penny will literally make your day, then, since the world is in fact planted in pennies, you have with your poverty bought a lifetime of days. It is that simple. What you see is what you get." -Annie Dillard My homeroom class of thirty-one has begun bringing pennies to class to help me support my World Vision sponsor child, Rocio, from Ecuador. I projected her picture on my LCD screen and