Almost one year ago, in the week leading up to Christmas, I met “the driftwood artist.”

I wonder if he is still there peddling his art on that part of coastal highway that runs through St. Petersburg, Florida.

And,  I wonder if all of life, really, is about cobbling together something beautiful out of the broken pieces.

There is always pain, I suspect, in giving birth to anything of great beauty or value to us- be it a child, or a book, or a marriage.

Or a whole new world: Jesus on the cross.  Jesus in a manger.

It’s a mystery by which I want my life to be encircled and held together.