I spy something . . .

Saturday. Sofa. Coffee. Christmas. Snow.

Snow on Christmas Day in Alabama. You don't see that every day. Well of course you don't because every day is not Christmas, a factor which greatly reduces the odds. I, like everyone I have met this morning, friend or stranger, am a bit giddy over the transmergence of these events. I am so giddy I am making up words . . . good words like transmergence, or verbirth (creation of new words). See what I mean? Giddy.


One of the themes of the original Christmas story is that God, the Creator of everything, decided to enter our world as one of us. A pretty big deal by any one's standards one would think. But when it happened, very few people noticed. Or if they noticed, they didn't really care much about it.

So on Christmas eve, yesterday, I vowed to myself that after my 8:00 a.m. appointment I would forget about work, open my eyes and see what's going on in the world. I headed to Nashville to visit Benjamin and Kate, my son and daughter-in-law. It was a beautiful winter day in north Alabama and central Tennessee. The radio broadcast of the festival of nine lessons and carols from King's College in Cambridge was rocking the Prius on the way northward.

Just south of Nashville there is a huge house just a short distance off of the interstate. A beautiful fence surrounded the beautiful grounds. Inside the beautiful fence that surrounded the beautiful grounds around the beautiful house was a herd of buffalo.

Or bison, I never know which, especially when running at 75 mph. The Prius, not the buffalo, or bison.

I suppose it is no big deal, but there was a herd of prairie animals in a yard in suburban Nashville.

Score one for open eyes. I spotted the buffalo/bison.

I was running a little behind and lunch was waiting on me at Kate and Benjamin's.
So naturally I decided to cut a minute or two by trying a different route after leaving the interstate. I know what you are thinking. The new route did cut about two minutes off the trip, so ha. My lostness is not the point this time. I was not exceeding the speed limit, but was concentrating on the unfamiliar road. A train track ran parallel to the road, and a freight was click-clacking along like they do right before they block the roads in suburbia. There was a break in the trees ahead and a railroad crossing sign. Here it comes. My short-cut might have a drawback, unless you are a crow. And I am not, although I often eat it after doing things like taking strange shortcuts when people are waiting on me. But the train kept going straight, not across my road. (Just to clarify, it was still on a track) As I looked through the break in the trees down the railroad track not taken I heard the shutter click in my brain and suddenly I had a snapshot. A red camping tent was almost hidden in the trees right beside the tracks. Farther back, in the tunnel that goes under the interstate, figures slowly moved, some sitting, some standing. I'm guessing they were homeless.

I suppose its no big deal. But homeless people on a cold Christmas Eve right there in suburbia.

Score another one for open eyes. I spotted the homeless.

Maybe I'll start trying to find car tags from all fifty states.

I don't want to play this game anymore.

.