I got an amazing job!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 

Being a teller at LaSalle bank on the corner of 68th and Division...so all you Southies can come visit me and bring me food and stuff...hehe!  woohoo :) 

This Child is naked, broken, beaten for no reason I can see....

Yes this Child of God is worth dying for, just like me......

Naked, Broken, and Beaten for no reason I can see.....

And this Child of God is worth dying for, just like me....

This is the story of Peter.  Peter was a high school boy different than all the others.  Peter lived in a different world than everyone else.  He lived in the world of his mind.  He percieved nothing around him as reality, but made every out to be something his mind created.  He created all the people around him.  He could not talk to them because they weren't real.  

Peter was extraordinarily smart.  He percieved perfectly.  He understood perfectly.  And when the people he created told him things, taught him things, he never forgot them.  Peter was the perfect student.  Peter got perfect grades and never spoke to a soul around him because in his mind, they were all his.  They weren't people of their own will, they were people he was controlling with his mind.  And he didn't want to talk to any of them and that's why none of them talked to him.  That's why he was the loneliest person alive.  Because he wanted to be.  Because the people he made up were too unreal for him.

So Peter wandered day after day.  People looked at him as the weirdo at school.  No one would talk to him because he had never talked to anyone first.  He was odd looking and no one wanted to associate with him.  No one understood how he could be so smart and so odd.  No one understood how he could live with out any social interaction whatsoever.  He would talk to himself and make wild gestures into the air as he went on living in the world in his head.  And as he walked past people it was as if they were a blur, an unreal blur, passing by him on the sidewalks, turning their heads to glance and laugh at the next move he would make.  But it didn't matter, because his world was separate and his world was his own.  They weren't real, they were a blur and they didn't matter.   

He saw nothing, he felt nothing apart from what he wanted to feel.  And this was his reality, his unreal reality.  Because Peter had become numb to the world.  And although Peter's world was so huge inside his head, the world outside his head that he could not perceive as reality looked at Peter as a stranger.  It looked at Peter and laughed and wanted him out so the world could be better.  And just as Peter could not care about the blurs walking by him on the sidewalk, nor did the blurs want to accept him.  Because he was different. 

And the Earth keeps turning.  And the world that each mind lives in is it's own. 

The snow is falling so thickly out the giant windows in front of me.  It’s warm inside, but the windows are so close it’s almost as if the cold air is penetrating right through them and cooling down the room.  Everybody is studying.  It’s quiet and peaceful.  The snow is singing me a song.  It’s singing a song to me.  The piano man, as I like to call the boy who is always playing piano here, comes in and starts playing.  He plays so beautifully.  It’s still peaceful.  It’s as if he’s playing along with the snow.  The snow is singing a song to me and the piano is harmonizing.  And it’s gorgeous. 

My toes are cold and so I tuck my feet tightly in between my folded legs.  My white mocha warms up my chilly fingers.  My scone crumbles with every piece I eat.  The snow is like my scone.  All the little pieces coming from one sky.  One cloud.  And it crumbles to the ground. 

About 6 feet to my left is a little Christmas tree.  In front of it is a sign that reads “Big Kids helping Little Kids.”  I don’t know exactly what program this tree is for.  My mind wanders.  It wanders over to the children I would want to help before anyone else in the world, the children in Lokichar, Kenya.  The children I have actually met, in the middle of the dessert.  Orphans.  I wish I could send them a Christmas present: a big box full of toys and chocolate and suckers and teddy bears and even a Christmas tree.  I with I could send them stockings and a fireplace and a CD full of Amy Grant and Manheim Steamroller and Michael W. Smith Christmas. 

I wish I could send them the snow.  I wish I could send them the song it is singing.  I wish I could send them this moment.  This moment with the piano and the coffee, even the scone. 

But I know that as I sit here, warm in this big comfy chair, with the cold air not quite penetrating into my body, listening to the snow sing a beautiful song to me, that the children there, in Africa, are also listening to a song.  And both songs are praise to God.  And in both places, at the same time, during the Christmas season, God is present, celebrating with us in song.