This is not going to be anything profound, or deeply insightful; I just wanted to share an awkward, but touching spirit that I experienced this Christmas season.

I was at a Chinese buffet with my fiance. She left the table to use the restroom and get another plate. She was probably gone for eight minutes or so. During this time, a lady at a table near us, whom must not have seen us come in, at about the 7:30 minutes mark came over to the table. She said, “I noticed you were dining alone, and no one should be alone on Christmas, so I wanted to wish you a Merry Christmas.”

I felt very awkward as I pointed at the buffet line and chuckled, “Well thank you, but my fiance was in the restroom and is now getting more food.” She looked over at my fiance and chuckled awkwardly, “Well, Merry Christmas all the same, and tell her also.”

Though it was awkward, the sentiment was touching. If I had been alone, that might have made my day. 

Just today, I was getting my car inspected for tag renewal. There was a gentleman there who looked a bit sad, perhaps lonely (if you pay attention, you’ll notice those people everywhere). In the spirit of the event from the night before, I struck up conversation with him. We must have chatted for 20 minutes or more. His face lit up as I genuinely engaged in the conversation we had started. It is amazing; simply acknowledging someone and caring, without any prerequisite conditions, can make someone’s day.

That ought to be the objective whatever time of year.

I was returning home tonight with my brother from the campus of KU after dropping off our youngest brother. As we left the dormitories I looked up an saw a harvest moon. I wrote a couple of haikus, as is my standard practice when awe-struck by nature, but the moon quickly lost its orange glow for its conventional tone. On the car ride back, down the drawl K-10 highway, I kept staring at the moon. It seemed larger than normal, and brighter. I was transfixed. Its vivid vestige imprisoned my thoughts as I drank in the luminous aura. I longed to exit the car and feel the touch of its soft light; this volition caused me to pause and consider.

The moon, lofty, grand, and majestic as it is, permits me no pleasure of touch. With the sun, you can feel her embrace, the fire’s hearth holds you close, and the candle’s flicker caresses the cheek–the moon’s light is capable only of visual illumination, not sensory stimulation. Its reflection, however, enlightens the dark, and brings forth perception in the night. Its powerful beams reigned in the darkness.

In this moment of intoxicating rapture, we rounded a bend to see Olathe and Overland Park resting in the gentle rolls of the terrain. I frowned as their twinkling lights distracted from the moon’s authority over the cold night. These were impostors, austere apparitions appraising man’s auspicious attitude, not authentic–like the moon. Then I smiled at the lights’ twinkling humor. They seemed jovial and awed by the night- -not the awe of the night. They seemed almost childlike and innocent nestled in Kansas’ placid landscape. They filled me with a pulse of glee, not erratic, but docile. They made me cheerful and full of hope.

Although lights are effigies of candles, and no where near the might of the moon, they cast out the darkness. The moon can remove some of night’s shadow, but even in its power, it does not dispel it. Lights, or a candle, though small on their own, cast away the dark around them. When gathered in community, they are enough to dispel the night itself. Perhaps the moon is the distracting of the two.

It is not the high, or mighty, or powerful that dispel the dark in this world; they merely reflect a real light, and serve as a symbol. The dark is only dispelled by real light, even if it small.

Do not think your light is insignificant, do not deem your flicker worthless in combating the night–it is enough. And if you join with other lights around you, your brilliance will pierce through the dark and inspire hope to those living in the darkness around you still under the ephemeral rule of the moon’s “light”.