At seven o’clock in the morning on Christmas day, 2022, our doorbell rang. We weren’t expecting family, as we’d seen them Christmas Eve. I was upstairs putting on my socks. My husband David answered the door, and I could hear him talking to someone. I could feel the chill all the way upstairs which meant the door was still open—he hadn’t invited them in. That meant it was a stranger. Who would be knocking on our door so early and why had I awakened so early that day? I never get up before eight.
Before my husband left the stranger on the porch and came upstairs to ask how I would feel about inviting him in, I knew our Christmas guest was most likely one of the homeless men who lived in our neighborhood park. Immediately, words of scripture ran through my mind, Hebrews 13:20: “Do not hesitate to show hospitality to strangers, for some have thereby entertained angels unaware.” Was an angel disguised as a beggar at our door? Do I even believe in angels? I am no longer Catholic, have long stopped believing in the virgin birth, the Christmas story, or the resurrection. Still, the rhythm of the holy word rooted within me when I was young—that utterance not literal but profoundly true—and became one with my breath, my beating heart. “Truly, I say unto you, as you did to one of the least of my brethren, you did unto me.” So, on that Christmas morning I found myself wondering if the risen savior I did not believe in might be standing in disguise at my front door.
I was not thinking rationally, I know. I’ve long stopped relying on reason. I think mythically more as I grow older. I look for the connections and patterns between what we perceive and what we think we know. I like to think, now that I am a grandmother, that I’ve grown into a fierce old woman, one of those crones you don’t want to mess with. I see things others don’t see. I read people. I’m something of a mage who knows that mystery can illuminate the ordinary, suffering and joy can co-exist. I believe I can transform energy at will.
David says the man is anxious and afraid. Someone has stolen all his things. He is wet and dirty and cold. There is frost on the ground. We’ve come off a week of below freezing weather and snow, much colder than the usual Seattle winter. He has a dog with him. And immediately, as we do, I feel more compassion for the animal than for the man. The dog is not responsible for the bad choices made by his master, the vicissitudes of fate, or the afflictions that have befallen the human who feeds him. But if the man cares for an animal, he is surely less likely to be violent toward his own kind.
I live in a cozy house worth ten times what I paid for it forty years ago, but I was once poor and ill and desperate. I vowed then that if I ever had the power to help someone in that state I would. It was not just compassion born of suffering, but compassion born of moral imperative that awakened my senses that Christmas morning. And whatever form of god or human or angel this visitor might be, it was possible that he had come with an intangible gift, some teaching or hidden blessing for those who have ears to hear and eyes to see. As one gives, so shall one receive. And so, I said to my husband, “let him in.”
And my beloved answered, “His name is John.”
