The Manger

A manger is a table where we lay out food for our animals.

An altar is a table where we lay out food for our god.

If you're a Christian, an altar is where God lays out food for you.

Because we package Christmas for children, we can easily miss some of the more challenging but essential aspects of the Nativity story.  It begins with the Roman oppression of the world by taxation.   In later chapters, Roman taxes and tax collectors would become integral to the Jesus story.  Seventy years after the birth of Christ, Rome burned the temple in Jerusalem and the rest of the city to the ground and dispersed the children of Abraham throughout the world.  The story begins with oppression and ends with the holy family hiding in Egypt to escape the mass infanticide ordered by Harrod the Great in his attempt to destroy the Christ.  That's a lot of negative feelings for a child, so we tend to omit those ideas from the Christmas story.  

I start the Christmas story not with the birth of Jesus but with the birth of Isaac many years before.  To prove his devotion to God, Abraham moves to sacrifice his own son and builds an altar to offer Isaac to the Godhead.  God stops the hand of Abraham and provides him with a perfect ram for sacrifice, setting a new standard between the people and God.  

Today, we think Abraham's actions were horrific, but human sacrifice was common among ancient peoples.  All over the world, there are stories of royal and tribal people offering a non-heir child as a human sacrifice.  Agamemnon provides the sacrifice of his daughter, Iphigenia, to Artemis so that the she will provide him fair winds on the way to Troy.  By stopping Abraham, God began a new paradigm among his people, who no longer were expected to make a human sacrifice to please their god.   

An altar is a table where people lay out food for their god to eat.  Agamemnon lays out a table where he offers his daughter's blood to the Goddess Artemis to drink.  In return, she forgave Agamemnon and allowed him fair winds.  In Abraham's case, he built a table, an altar, for the lord where the food was to be the meat of his son Isaac, but it ended up being the meat of a ram.

In French, the word "manger" means to eat.  A manger is an archaic term for a table laid out with food for animals to eat.  It is a humble altar dressed so that we sacrifice food for our humble servants: the beasts of the field.  

There is very little in the Bible that isn't a symbol for something else.   In time, we learn that God flips the dynamic between himself and his people, and instead of our offering sacrifices to him, he sacrifices his own son to us.  Laying the newborn Christ child in a manger doesn't just mean that he was born of humble surroundings; it means that God puts his own son on the humblest of all altars and offers him as sacrificial food for us. 

Later, in the Jesus story, Jesus says, "Hoc est corpus meum pro vobis; hoc facite in meam--Take, eat; this is My body."  God reverses the story of Abraham.  We no longer offer our children as food for gods; God offers his child as food for us.  

A manger might begin as the humblest of all altars, fit only for beasts, but the nature of God's offering on it elevates the manger to the greatest of all altars.  On a manger, God offers food for all humanity.

Moral Obligations

This sounds like a confession story, but it's not.  Confession would mean I thought I failed, and I do not.  You can't always have a happy ending for all the characters in a story.  That I could not arrange this isn't an indication that I failed, but it might indicate that I learned something about life.

One of the first things you learn as a Christian is that good deeds can get you killed.  Sympathy means you regret the bad things that happen to people, but empathy means it hurts you too.  The universe tends toward declination and decay, and the only way to counteract that is with sacrifice.  That's a lesson taught me not only by my father in Mississippi but by the Father of us all.  

My father only had one commandment.  "The Lord has been generous to you; it's your moral obligation to be generous with everyone else; otherwise, you waste the blessings you were given."  An obligation to God is pretty serious business.  It wasn't a platitude--it's how he lived his own life.  Being generous with the world around him was one of the reasons it was so difficult to make time with my father.  The rest of the world required some of his time too.  I understood this, so I never resented it.

When I was younger, I didn't understand this lesson in a practical sense.  Everyone I knew was about the same as me.  They had homes and parents and either went to my school or one similar to it.  But, as I grew older, I began to notice differences in people.  The first was a boy down the street, who was very much like me, except that he had nearly crippling juvenile arthritis.  I enjoyed spending time with him, and it didn't make much sense to me that he should have arthritis and I should not.  I tried to be as generous with him as I could because I was grateful for being healthy, but finding ways to be generous when you're eleven can be a challenge, and none of it was making his body any less painful.  That he hurt was hurting me, and I didn't have any idea how to fix that.

I'm quite sure that applying the commandment to be generous in social situations was part of the order, but I sometimes had trouble knowing how to apply it.   Even though I would eventually learn to socialize, one of the reasons I began to write was because one-on-one communications were intimidating to me, an artifact of my stuttering, I suppose, even long after it became difficult to tell I ever stuttered.  Writing allowed me to communicate freely, even though it would be many years before anyone ever saw these communications.  

By thirteen, I'd gotten fairly good at communicating with other boys, but girls were starting to become part of the world, and they terrified me.  It didn't seem fair to introduce a new element like that.  They taught us to read and write and add fractions, but there were no classes on this new phenomenon, just a sixteen-millimeter film on how our bodies were about to get hairy.  

The idea that someone could change how I thought and how I saw the world just by standing there was both fascinating and intimidating.  And then there was my father's commandment.  How was I supposed to be generous with people who could destroy me with a glance?

The romance thing, I decided, could wait.  I would focus instead on getting strong and learning to draw more realistically.  Most of my friends were pairing up, but that seemed very confusing to me, some of them had pretty disastrous results, and I was absolutely unclear about the rules or goals, so I just avoided it.

Within a few years, I did find a girlfriend, though.  My first one.  I probably should say that she found me because I didn't really have much to do with it.  At first, it seemed pretty much like everybody else.  This girlfriend thing was easy.  You talk on the phone a lot, and you touch at every opportunity when no parents are looking.  But then, one night, I found her father lying in a pool of his own blood in the bathroom.   That changed everything.

My father's commandment to be generous hadn't really applied to the concept of girlfriends before, but now it did.  I had a father, but she did not.  The Lord was generous to me; it was my obligation to be generous back.   How to be generous, as much as I wanted to, was complicated, though.  At sixteen, all I really had to give was my time, and so I did as much of it as I could, and I listened a lot, and I acted like I was much stronger than I really was.

Trying to fill the hole left by a missing parent made me less interesting and less entertaining than other boys though, so eventually, I found out I was not the only fox in the hen house.  The feeling of betrayal was tangible and crushing.  She said she did it because she never felt worthy of me, which, I suppose, is also my fault.  After all, the first thing you should do for someone you say you love is to make sure they feel appreciated and worthy.  I asked to be released from my commitment and my obligation to her.  I believed I had done my best, but it wasn't working out, and it was starting to really hurt.  She agreed, which she probably would have done anyway since she already had my replacement lined up.  Being generous was the right thing to do, but it didn't offer the promise of a happy ending for me.

In college, I decided this business of a steady girlfriend was pretty confusing and pretty complicated and something I wasn't very good at, so I avoided it entirely.  If I couldn't complete the story in one or two months, I just didn't engage.  There were a few girls who were satisfied with the two-month dance, and for that, I was grateful.  There was one girl who I managed to stretch out the story for almost a year.  We were rarely ever sober together, though, which might explain that.  She eventually transferred to Mississippi State to sober up and meet a much nicer boy.   I gave her an opal pendant to say goodbye.  So long, friend.  Thanks for all the fish.

The obligation to be generous continued, though, only without the more complicated, long-term commitment.  I became known as someone who would listen to anyone who was hurt, which I always thought was odd because I thought everyone did that.  Those were really very pleasant days.  I was very rarely ever really hurt, but I was lonely sometimes.   There's never really been a time when I wasn't lonely.  Most of me is locked up inside of me, and I don't suppose that will ever change.  Empathy costs nothing when all you have to do is listen, and so I did.

After college, I met a very tiny girl who leaned into my chest one night and said her head hurt, putting a noose around my heart for almost two years.  I was devoted to her, but she was devoted to someone else, and he was devoted to yet another person, so our sad love quadrangle limped along until it collapsed in on itself.  No harm, no foul; everybody went home without a penalty, at least on my behalf.

After that, things started going very wrong.  Being out of college and into the make-or-break real world changed everything.  Many of my friends were making forever kind of relationships, but I was struggling to find someone I wanted to take with me to the movies more than a few times in a row.  

Another more complicated element appeared.  I had a stable and productive relationship with my parents.  I had a stable job, and my income exceeded my expenses, and my health was pretty good.  None of this would matter, except that several of the girls I met, even ones I had known before, couldn't say the same.   My life wasn't exciting or glorious by any means, but it was stable, and theirs was not, and I had the commitment to be generous with people who were not given the things I had been given.  Setting me up for a situation where I had to decide whether or not to get mixed up in their problems.  My life was fairly easy, and theirs was not, which wasn't at all fair.  Surely they deserved the same sort of life I had.

What happened next was complicated and confusing.   There were times when I would meet someone and say to myself, "This person is interesting and attractive.  I would like to know more about her."  So, I would make a few engagements with them to get to know them, and as I was learning about them and becoming mildly attached to them, I would find out that their lives hadn't been going so well since college.  Their jobs were unstable or gone, and their relationships with their family were unstable; one I learned had a father who was recently sent to federal prison, leaving the family in a terrible spot.  

These stories triggered my commitment to be generous and my life-long desire to be useful and helpful.  Ultimately, the question would come up, "can you help me?"  That put me in a bit of a spot.  My intention was to find someone to go to the movies with, not get entangled in someone's struggle for existence, but my intentions wouldn't change anything.  Neither would my walking away without helping.

"Well yeah," was my answer, "but it'd be complicated and expensive."  Having someone you already think is pretty say they needed you can be a powerful inducement.  Helping a little made me a little more committed to them, which led me to help a little bit more, which led to more commitment, and pretty soon, the briars of their life's entanglement had me pretty firmly trapped as well.  I let the thorns dig into my skin rather than into theirs because the Lord had been more generous with me.

For their part, they were equally committed to solving the problems of their life, so at that level, it looked like we were working together.  But, from another perspective, they weren't committed to me at all, other than as a benefactor, so very soon, it became clear that I was becoming more and more committed to someone who, at best, would walk away from me once their problems were resolved because they had no more use for me, which ultimately is what happened.  

The power dynamic in a situation like this is very uncomfortable.  I'm not longer a friend or a companion but more like an unwilling parent, taking the place of a parent who, for some reason, wasn't in the picture anymore.  I wanted someone who enjoyed being with me, not somebody who felt obligated to me, yet if I withdrew my support for whatever they were going through, I had no idea if their lives would work their way back on track.  One of them didn't get their life back on track, which made everyone I would meet afterward much more complicated.  I worried about what would happen to them if I turned away. Would that make me responsible for what happened next?  

Because I had a steady income and a stable network of relationships in my life, I felt obligated to stay in this lopsided partnership until their lives were stable again.  Otherwise, I'd be disrespecting the things I've been given.  This was not a comfortable situation and not at all what I was looking for.  I was stuck, and finding a way out was always complicated.

Eventually, it got to the point where I had to ask that they allow me to extricate myself from the situation.  That became complicated because it meant they would have to find ways to support themselves without my help, and at least two of them had grown to believe that I was obligated to support them forever if need be.  I'm not sure why.  

Ultimately I would twice have to get lawyers to help untangle me.  They set up payment plans so I could be reimbursed for the sometimes considerable sums I'd loaned these women I met who said they needed me.  One almost immediately found another guy to pay off her debt to me.  I felt sorry for that guy.  I have no idea how many times she repeated that pattern.  Another made steady payments for almost a year.  She had several more years to go before paying it all off, but I asked her one night if she was even sorry for what happened.  Had she ever thought about what lying about her feelings had done to me?  She began to cry, and I could see she felt maybe not sympathy for me but shame for what she'd done, so I told her to forget the rest of the payments.  I really just wanted some acknowledgment of what I'd gone through for her sake.  I didn't need the money back, and she wasn't ever going to do anything to make it a better memory for me.  I'm not sure how she could.  

This pattern repeated itself enough for me to think that's all there was for me.  I was beginning to wonder why I couldn't find someone who just wanted to hang out and spend time together.  It began to make me very suspicious of people.  When I would meet somebody new, I'd wonder, "what is it you really want from me?"  and avoid their eyes.  I'm sure this became annoying to everyone around me.  I didn't mean to be suspicious and untrusting, but I was, and I'm sure for some, it was kind of offensive when I began trying to figure out what was wrong with their lives that might become a problem for me later, especially when there wasn't really anything wrong with their lives.  I'd begun to expect these tragedies everywhere I looked, which just wasn't how the world really worked.  Some people had no need of anything I could do at all, and I'm sure the whole concept seemed curious to them.

Ultimately, I gave up on the idea of finding a companion.  It was just too complicated, and I didn't want to set my foot into another trap.  I'd buried myself in my ideas before, which seemed like the most logical thing to do then.  These and other wounds made me much less willing to be a part of that world, and I began to put on weight because I didn't really care anymore.  The darkness that one day became the predominant climate of my world began forming around the edges. 

For four years, I completely gave up.  "Lots of people live their whole lives without significant relationships," I thought.  About this time, I met someone who, for the life of me, seemed to just enjoy spending time with me.  Her life, as far as I could tell, was really very stable, and we got along on just about every subject.  I couldn't discern any part of her that might indicate that she needed anything but companionship.  She was eight years younger than me, but we adapted pretty well to that, and you couldn't tell that much difference.  

Despite the intensity of our relationship, I had overlooked something very important.  She had not menstruated since three weeks before our first kiss.  She was, in fact, quite pregnant, and her unseen and unspoken purpose in being with me was to hide that fact from herself and carry on as if he life wasn't about to irrevocably change.  This deception continued until even her stretchiest clothes wouldn't fit anymore, and we both had to face up to the truth.

I'd taken a pretty serious blow, and even though I very much wanted to escape, the story involved yet another life now, and I didn't think it would be right for me to abandon them both, so I agreed to stay at least until the baby's future was secured.  One day, she said that the child's father decided he wanted to be a father, and she released me from all promises and commitments.  They would eventually marry and had a very happy life together.  The experience left a hole in me that took quite a while to heal.  The darkness around the edges of my life gathered strength.  

I would eventually marry, and I'm still alive while I write this, so obviously, it's not the ultimate end of the story, but it's the end for now.   I would eventually contact nearly all these women, either by phone or by writing, and say that I forgave them and that I had no hard feelings.  They owed me nothing, only to have a good life.  They were doing the best they could to get themselves out of a bad situation, and I was doing the best I could to help them; that nobody was particularly looking out for me was regrettable but ultimately not as important as getting their lives into a more stable situation than where I found them.   The Lord blessed me in so many ways, but that doesn't mean I will have everything or be happy. 

There was a price to pay for all of this, and I would pay it, but that's a story for another day. 

The Christmas Song

 I've learned that the heart of us is not the body but the mind.  I've also learned that the mind of us can sometimes become trapped inside itself.  Sometimes it comes back out one day, like mine did, but sometimes the mind stays inside itself until there's nothing left.

I was genuinely touched when St. Catherine's Village announced that their new memory care unit would be named for my father.  Sometimes I feel like St. Dominics and St. Catherine's are my half-siblings because my father spent so much time trying to develop them.  I didn't really know what Alzheimer's was then.  I hadn't known anyone who had it yet, but that would change.  I didn't know how many people who I knew to be brilliant before their lives at St. Catherine's and become residents of Campbell Cove.  I didn't know how many people I loved would eventually have their own mind betray them and leave them, and ultimately take life away from them.

On the hall where I'm rehabilitating my stubborn leg, a woman came today to lead the residents in Christmas carols.  This is the seventh time this year someone has tried to lead me in Christmas carols, so I snuck out.  Sometimes being here makes me very sad.  None of these people deserve what's happening to them.  For the most part, they make the best of it and rarely complain.  It's hard for me, though, because some of them I knew when they were strong and brilliant and holding up the pillars of Mississippi, healing patients, creating and practicing laws, building businesses, and more.  On the walls is the art of women who I knew to be brilliant and formidable and who spent their last breaths here.

When it was over, I made an appearance to pretend like I'd been there all along.  I don't think anyone was fooled.  I heard the woman who led the activity speaking to someone else about how she was organizing some residents over at Campbell Cove for their Christmas performance, and her lead singer was a woman with extensive operatic training who was set to do three solos but couldn't because she's lost her glasses.  

There's something in the way she said it that sounded very familiar to me.  There are only so many people in Jackson with extensive operatic training who would be a candidate for a memory-care unit.

"What's her name?"  I asked.  "The woman who lost her glasses?"

I can't give you the names of other residents here, but it was the woman I was thinking it must be.  Her husband was my dear friend and someone I had a great deal in common with.  We shared a love of the arts, of our fraternity, and we both had familial connections to a foundational utility company in Mississippi.  His wife shared these interests and more, and together they spent their lives trying to elevate the cultural opportunities in Jackson and Mississippi.

I wasn't aware that she was in need of the kind of help a memory care unit provided.  She was, when I knew her, a uniquely brilliant person.  Learning this, I felt a breath of melancholy flow over me.  "At least her music is still with her." I thought.

"I use simple magnification glasses when I read.  They're very cheap, so I buy them in quantity because I lose them too.  Do you think this would help your friend when she sings?"  I asked and returned to my room to fetch one of my extra pairs.

"Take these to your friend.  I hope they help her read the music.  There's no need to return them.  I have many.  Please tell her that I love her and I think of her and her husband often.  My name is Boyd Campbell, and I will do my very best to attend the performance."  

There are a number of structures named for my family.  It's honestly more than a bit embarrassing when I'm inside one of them.  It's just another reminder of how difficult it's been to do anything people might know me for more than they know of my uncle or father, or mother.  

I have no delusions about Alzheimer's and what it does to people.  I know this could be one of the last performances for this brilliant and talented woman.  It will be almost unbearably sad for me to be in the building named for my father listening to this performance, but it will be almost unbearably beautiful as well, not just because of how well she sings but because of the many golden threads that extend from that moment, connecting me to my past and the people I love and lost.

That's what Christmas is about, isn't it? All the gossamer threads and breezes between ourselves and our past and our lives and our loves?  I haven't celebrated Christmas in a long time because I felt like the weight of memory was killing me, sort of like how the loss of memory sometimes kills brilliant people.  This Christmas is different, though.  The weight of memory is lifting me.  If this woman can use my spare pair of glasses to help her give one of her last performances, then that might be the best Christmas gift I've ever given to myself.  

Aware

When I was at Millsaps, one of my most favorite people was a guy named Jerry Jeff Berry.  An unusually brilliant guy; he had one of the most unique perspectives I've ever known.

As a teenager, he once tried to climb to the top of Kentucky Fried Chicken on North State Street because he wanted to touch the giant bucket on top--an impulse I completely understood.  Like many things he and I climbed in our youth, that roof wasn't meant for climbing, and he fell off, resulting in a coma that lasted for several weeks.  When people asked him what it was like being in a coma, he said: 

"One day, you'll open this eye.  The next day, you'll open this other eye.  The whole time, you're never really aware if you're aware."

I thought that's such a perfect description of my own life, of my perspective on life:  I'm never really aware if I'm aware.  

Many years later now, I don't know if that condition ever really changed.  At least now I'm aware that I'm not really sure if I'm aware.  

He had a pretty remarkable career after Millsaps, which included, for a short while, selling mattresses.  I thought, for a guy who questioned reality after falling off Kentucky Fried Chicken, providing people with something soft to land on must seem like such an utter act of kindness and wisdom.  

"Take this, my friend; you'll never know when you'll need it."