Blogtrek

Yuletide 2003

Well, I had my Christmas, or Yuletide, as it is for me, since I do not believe in any special significance in Jesus Christ. However, the idea of a special child did take a part in my Yuletide for 2003. I went to a service of the First Unitarian Church of Richmond, and heard a Christmas story by Cyndi Simpson. Yes, this is the same Cyndi Simpson that wanted to give an invocation to the Chesterfield Board of Supervisors, but was not allowed to by the board because of her Wiccan religion. It was a story I had never heard before, of a woman, La Befana, who lived by herself with her cooking and her broom. Yes, according to the cultural stereotype, she was a witch. A parade came to town and a boy ran out to her house, saying they were going to see the Royal Child of Light and give him gifts. So La Befana cooked up a storm and took a whole bunch of gifts for this child, and got her broom to fly and rode it after the parade. She did not find the Child, nor did she ever, but she kept showering gifts on all the children, thinking that any one of them could be the child.

I had heard this story earlier, of someone who was trying to find someone special to give a gift to, but could not find him, so he gave gifts to everyone thinking that any one could be this person. I could see a person hunting around for the perfect job, and that he wants to perform it well, but never find it, and instead does the best he can at each job he gets anyway, thinking that each of these jobs could be the perfect job. I could think of some man hunting for the perfect mate, an L6 (see "Logarithms keep Dr. Brown in Perspective" for definition of L6) or even better, and in the meantime treating each woman he meets as though she were this perfect woman. In each case the protagonist does a lot of good and achieves his purposes with less than the perfect, while hunting down the perfect and never finding it. So I find it quite inspiring, and I am glad to have heard it. It inspired me so much that I wrote a song symbolizing the journey of La Befana.