By Liza Neal

I know a child
whose Christmas tree
was packed so high with presents
you couldn’t see its base,
and after a few hours excitement, he was bored.

I know another child.
“Santa Claus brought me a backpack!”
She told me with shining eyes.
And frankly I was surprised,
because I didn’t think
Santa Claus would come
to an asylum seeker at El Chaparral.

It was of course
the only thing she owned,
which did not diminish the joy, weeks later,
of a Christmas gift received
by a child fleeing death.

Liza Neal is a spiritual director and writer laboring to explode the boundaries of how we understand ourselves and the world we live in.  She studied religion, writing, and dance at Hampshire College followed by mysticism and liberation theologies at Yale Divinity School.  She is an ordained UCC minister, partner, and mother.