THE WRONG BOTTLE

As December mornings in Gary, Indiana go it was nothing unusual: cold, gray, damp and dim, with a stiff southerly wind blasting off Lake Michigan that made one want to burrow deeper and stay longer under the blankets. After pummeling the snooze button for nearly an hour I rolled out of the bunk and began my morning routine: brush the teeth, use the exfoliating wipes on face, hands, arms and legs, power down and repower the gadgets and clean their glass screens, check the weather and traffic apps, make sure my directions were accurate and my stops timed accordance with Chicago traffic. The last thing I usually do in this battery of ablutions is to grab the spray bottle filled with tap water and give my dome a quick spritz so as not to frighten the children.

I keep my spritz bottle in a storage crate that contains various things I need to grab quickly and without taking my eyes off the road: travel mugs, water bottles, electric razor, lens wipes, sunglasses and this week a new item, some stuff I ordered from Amazon (picture above) that takes the stink out of even the foulest smelling trailer. It works like a charm and contains some very concentrated and potent chemicals that explain its effectiveness.

I’m guessing your guessing what happened next. I gave my hair about five quick bursts from the spritzer, and thought, “That water sure does smell good …” before the rest of my gears kicked in and I looked down to see a bottle of NI 712 in my hand instead of an unlabeled spray bottle with clear contents. By grace I was able to make it to the showers in the Petro to give my scalp multiple hard scrubbings before any toxic reactions took place.

It was dim and cold. I was distracted and not paying attention. I picked up the wrong bottle. Low light, and, beyond that, darkness itself, can create disorder and chaos, especially when our heads are not in the game.

The pandemic has presented us all with a number of ‘firsts’, and Christmas Eve 2020 is one of them for me and I suspect for many of you. This will be the first Christmas Eve in memory where I am not gathered close to midnight in a sanctuary, singing carols, lifting candles, and hearing the nativity narrative that not even our abuse of the holiday has been able to ruin yet.

But one thing is the same. It is the light that comes with The Birth. It is the small flicker of flame that fights back the darknesses that threaten to subsume us. It is God’s “No” to the chaos and the blindness that is otherwise fatal to us. We are again given the chance to choose the right bottle - the right way, the right truth above all truths, the Light of the World.

Merry Christmas, my friends.