[Oe List ...] A Christmas Story

[Margaret Helen Aiseayew]

In lieu of a Christmas letter, I am sending you a snapshot of my life:

So night before last there was a young man stranded at my hotel (central Iowa)with a broken down truck.  His father was coming to get him with a trailer to load his pickup and take it back to Oklahoma.  When I had finished enough work that I was certain I would not fall behind, I took time to visit with the young man.  He is studying astrophysics at the University of Minnesota.  I haven't met a student that excited about their discipline in a long time.  He was just sparking energy.

He took a dime out of his pocket.  He asked if I knew how far away the sun was.  I had always thought of it as 93 million miles away.  He (just 20) was proud of me. Then he said that if the earth were in the center of the dime and the sun was on the edge (making the radius of the dime equal to 93 million miles) the next closest star to our sun would be two miles down the road.

The radius of a dime is less than the width of my smallest finger.  Imagine even measuring two miles in finger width after finger width.  

So this young man on a journey shows up in my life because his plans were not working out so well.  He fills me with awe of the whole of our universe and our place in it.  Then his father comes to load up the problem and take it away.

Just as the stars are said to have aligned at some time in the distant past,  I believe that Christmas miracles are still occurring all around us.

Emanuel, Margaret
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