Before leaving for Christmas break, I find myself in the dingy inner room of a women’s shelter handing out stockings to the eager little children and their moms. A young girl peers eagerly at me, but I know the mere idea of a gift is foreign to her; she does not know what it means to receive; She cannot understand provision. I show her all the things in her stalking and try my best in pleading with her to understand that they are hers to keep. I desperately want her to know that she gets to have all these gifts not watch as they are taken from her by the other children. I find a small bottle of bubbles and open it for her. She stares inquisitively as I dip the small plastic utensil into the bubbly water and bring it to my lips. As I produce a large and dripping monstrosity which rises but for a moment and then sinks quickly to the ground, I see something incredible. The young girl, having never seen a bubble before, throws her hands out shaking, widens her eyes, gyrates her entire body, and lets out a near deafening screech! And it is not only this first time but every time she sees one. For almost a straight hour, this ecstatically intense noise fills the deadened scene of the shelter. I am convinced that if joy could be bottled, it could never be as real, refreshing, or invigorating. It is as if the young girl is the sunrise, and her excitement is beaming off a single drop of dew as is streams through a spring’s morning cloud like the rays of the sun… There is something profound here I think.
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