Thoughts on Nativity: God with us
Three Wise Girls
by Carl Mazza
The place that the shepherds found was not an academy or an abstract republic; it was not a place of myths allegorised or dissected or explained away. It was a place of dreams come true.
- G. K. Chesterton

Our chapel service was unusually full on a warm, sunny Sunday afternoon in October. A lot of young visitors were in attendance, along with our regulars. Among the many there, almost quietly unnoticed, were two girls, seven and eight years old, sitting attentively, taking in the service along with their mother. It was not until the gathering was almost over, as we were assembled in a circle for our final benediction that these two children came to the group's attention.

We suddenly noticed that the girls had come with a purpose. The mother of one began explaining, meekly and briefly, that the two friends from Rock Hall, Maryland had been working hard for many weeks on a project to raise money - so they could help someone who needed it. One of the girls produced a bag filled with rolled coins, loose change, and wadded bills. It was the fruit of much labor: Baking and selling cookies, doing chores, and asking for donations in the neighborhood.

They stood a little apprehensively, at the fringe of our circle, holding out the satchel of coins and bills and waiting for someone to accept it. For a moment there was absolute quiet, a rare point for all of clear realization, and the sensation of human love among us.

We quickly re-gathered ourselves, and their gift was formally accepted with loud applause. When the entire event was over, events: The girls' sudden impulse, their exciting and fervent project, and their joyful presentation to us. All that was clear. But what was the source of inspiration? Was it two girls at play, who suddenly decided they wanted to help the homeless? Were they quietly talking together, perhaps with other friends, after seeing a television news report or reading an article in a paper? Had they actually met someone, perhaps another child in school, in their small town on the Chesapeake Bay, who had inspired their interest in helping others?

Perhaps, and more likely, their great impulse had spontaneously come between them, from the hidden places of their young hearts. Some theologians have concluded that human nature is essentially evil, a negative force -- left unchecked, it will give rise to the vilest of passions and imaginations. Some would argue that ordinary human experience only proves this out again and again. Yet, the determined activity of these two girls presents a far different understanding.

By coincidence, another thirteen year old girl was visiting Clairvaux Farm that day and was also in attendance at the service. She had lived in our community for a year with her family when she was nine years old, and she was back for a visit. She arrived at the Farm earlier that afternoon with eyes wide open, and a huge smile. She seemed to want to look at everything, investigate every building and every inch of the grounds she had remembered from a few years earlier. When she came to the playground, she stood observing for a while, then walked over to me and said simply, "everything looks so small!" She pointed to the monkey bars and said, "When I used to play on those, I thought they were so big and it was so high when I climbed to the top! Now, I just think it has shrunk!"

Her comments caused many of us to remember the time, too many years ago, when that was our similar experience, upon re-visiting scenes and places of our earliest years. The world around us was larger, more formidable, sometimes enormously frightening. As we grew, often without conscious realization, our inner-world unfolded as well, as had that of our thirteen-year-old visitor. The things around us actually remain the same size -- it is we who grow, and the burgeoning perception of a vast universe within causes us to stand taller, see farther, and imagine things we never dreamed before.

The connections, on that fair Fall afternoon, were too strong to miss. One girl, who had experienced homelessness as a child, and was now inexorably being led, by a nameless power within her, to the higher places of human imagination and reality. And, two children, who had never experienced homelessness, were starting to perceive, again from some secret source, the unchartered place of loving home for which we all long.

It is not only the act of their giving, but also the motive of it which is important. In the sheer sincerity of their activity, the girls had set before us, by their actions, something which defined us, and, for a moment, brought us together around a common, beloved memory. Perhaps our nature is not hopelessly depraved. Is it possible that the human spirit is by nature giving, loving, creating, and good? So defined, it would surely fulfill the saying of the Book of Genesis that we are fashioned in the very image of God.
So it is sometimes in our daily routine at Clairvaux Farm. We are busy in performing an ordinary service, sometimes even a necessary drudgery, yet many times also a satisfying job. Even so, we are continually surprised by simple encounters, which turn out to be profound in their impact. Such was the time, when five small fingers held out a plastic bag heavy with the coinage of earth. For but an instant, in the wonder of the moment, we were blinded by the brightest of lights. The shivers along our collective spines dazzled us with the sudden certainty that the divine breeze had moved among us and formed our circle.

Perhaps these young girls, all three, are not exactly as they may appear, so glowing and new in a world often jaded and bewildering. They each, in their unassuming way, revealed far more on a Sunday afternoon than their fresh spirits conveyed at first glace.

Maybe they, and we, are much other than ordinary looks suggest. Perchance their beautiful faces are after all, in the immortal mystery of life and reality, mere disguises - the innocent masks of timeless, wise beings who belong truly to the everlasting ages.