Friday, January 2nd, 1997

(from a card to Wayne and Carol Gray of Blue Eye, Missouri, soon
 to be of Houston, TX):

Dear Wayne and Carol,
    I don't do Christmas cards.  Rather, I choose to commemorate the
holiday seasons by sending out Epiphany cards.  Epiphany is to me a 
very important and underrated religious holiday.  It is, of course, the
day we use to commemorate the coming of the three Magi to the infant
Jesus, bearing the gifts.  And yet it has come to mean a lot more--
for it to me connotes Enlightenment, particulaly the kind of Enlighten-
ment that our God of Agape, our God of Love, can and does provide:
"A usually sudden manifestation or perception of the essential nature
or meaning of something; an intuitive grasp of reality through some-
thing (as an event) usually simple and striking." --Webster's Dictionary
    I feel that God gives us many opportunities to experience the growth
of and reality of epiphanies in our lives, if we but have the wit and
character to be open to them.  Our society, however, gives us many ways
of excusing ourselves from such encounters with the beautiful reality
which is the holiness of openness & vulnerability to God's love freely
received and freely given.  I know I have fortress walls up, but I also
know that God works with me to dismantle the prison I have erected about
my own soul.
    You all blessed me so very much with your hospitality and generosity.
I thank you very deeply for the kindness and warmth you demonstrated and
with the hope that one day I may learn to be such a host and hospitable
as you were to me.
				A friend,
				David Eisenstein