My calendar tells me this is World Literary Day and orders me, "Share your favorite book." Well, my favorite Christmas book, really just a story, is Truman Capote's A Christmas Memory. Some time in the early 1950's I saw a TV show based on it and then bought the book and have read it most Christmases since. My book is published by Random House. I notice that there is a new version out with pictures.
Capote shares with us a memory of getting ready for Christmas with an old cousin who is very simple. They are not well off and make do with simple decorations and gifts. Near the end they are flying the kites that they gave each other for Christmas and as they sprawl on the grass his friend cries suddenly,
"My, how foolish I am! You know what I've always thought? I've always thought a body would have to be sick and dying before they saw the Lord. And I imagined that when He came it would be like looking at the Baptist window: pretty as colored glass with the sun pouring through, such a shine you don't know it's getting dark. And it's been a comfort: to think of that shine taking away all the spooky feeling. But I'll wager it never happens. I'll wager at the very end a body realizes the Lord has already shown Himself. That things as they are"--her hand circles in a gesture that gathers clouds and kites and grass and the dog pawing earth over her bone--"just what they've always seen, was seeing Him. As for me, I could leave the world with today in my eyes."
This expresses so perfectly my conviction that God is always present in everyone and everything around us.
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