The story was told to me by a former deliveryman named John.

The Christmas season was the busiest time of year for delivery-persons. Drivers saw a major uptick in workload. This did nothing to improve John’s sunny disposition.

At Christmastime, John was about as cheerful as the infamous storybook character who once purloined Yuletide from Whoville.

One night, at the end of a shift, John was making final deliveries in a rundown apartment complex. There was a little girl, standing outside the building, waiting for him.

“Did you bring anything for me?” she asked in a small Who-voice.

“What’s your apartment number?” he spat back.

She told him. He rifled through his packages. “Nothing here for you.”

The girl was crestfallen.

After he finished deliveries on foot, the girl was still standing on the curb beside his truck.

“Maybe it got lost,” she said. “Don’t packages get lost sometimes?”

“No,” he said.

“Not even sometimes?”

“No.”

She was now his shadow. The girl wouldn’t leave his side. She kept asking about her package.

Finally, he turned to face her. “Listen, I’m really busy tonight. You need to write down the

tracking number and call the company.”

The little girl turned to walk away, hangdog.

He felt one inch tall.

“Wait,” he called. “Let me look in the back of my truck, just to be sure.”

He knew the package was not in his truck, of course, but he saw no harm in digging through parcels in his truck, pretending.

The girl was patiently waiting outside the vehicle, chatting up a storm.

“It’s a Christmas tree,” she said. “We ordered an inflatable tree. You blow it up.”

“You should always write down your tracking number,” he said. “That way you can follow your package.”

“We’ve never had a Christmas tree before because my mom says we can’t afford one. And they’re messy.

“Plus, Mom’s never home, she’s always at her boyfriend’s…

We lit the peace candle for Advent a few nights ago.

My wife and I read aloud from our little Episcopal book, standing before our Advent candles, using solemn voices. The dogs were seated around our feet, trying to interpret our human words, listening closely for words like: “Ham.”

The peace candle is important. Namely, because peace is elusive. A lot of people don’t even know what peace is. I’m not sure I do.

Foster homes are full of kids who have never known peace a moment in their lives. Prisons are overrun with the unpeaceful.

Addiction rehabs shelter souls desperately seeking peace. ICUs are chock-full of people pleading for peace.

I wonder what the world would be like if we had more peace. What if stress and worry and fighting and bickering, which constantly run in the background, like an internet browser with too many tabs open, simply vanished?

Who would we be if we had total peace? How many more hours in the day would we have available? Would we finally quit interacting with our

phones and start living?

FACT: Every day, an estimated 660,000 motorists text and drive. That ain’t peace.

What about culture? What would society be like during absolute peace? Or is such a thing even possible? Is world peace even a real thing?

Or is peace just a storybook idea, but not physical reality?

After all, our biological and ecological environment is anything but peaceful. Life itself is always moving. All the time. Planets orbit, spin, and rotate. Animals and plants struggle for survival. Living things procreate. They grow, they age, they buy real estate, then die.

Atoms vibrate. Cells divide. Bacteria multiply. That doesn’t sound very peaceful.

Then again, maybe I’ve got peace all wrong. Maybe peace isn’t stillness. Maybe peace isn’t even something we “do” at all. Maybe peace simply “is.”

Maybe peace on earth IS here, right now, and we humans…

They left him in a dumpster. They just didn’t want him. Simple as that. So they threw him away. Like garbage.

He was six weeks old. They could have taken him anywhere. A church. An adoption center. They could’ve left him on a doorstep, for crying out loud. But they put him in the trash.

When someone found Dennis, he was crying. His furry body was cut up, bloody, from head to foot. Maybe the cuts came from rolling around in a dumpster that contained shards of glass. Or maybe they came from the person who put him here.

No way to know. All anyone knew is that Dennis would probably die.

He was found in South Oxfordshire, England. Someone took him to Blue Cross animal shelter where they cleaned him, and bandaged his wounds.

“I didn’t expect him to be so small,” said a shelter worker. “He was absolutely tiny. I’ve never seen a dog of his age quite so little and thin, and with so many injuries...”

Dennis’s little body was weak. He hadn’t

eaten in days. He was frightened, and trembling violently. If he would’ve had any fluid in his bladder he would have released it out of fear. But he was too dehydrated even swallow, let alone tee-tee.

When they washed him, they found more severe wounds beneath his fur. They rushed him to the emergency vet. It was evident, Dennis would probably die. He was too small. Too weak.

Then, the emergency vet discovered something else.

Dennis was blind and deaf.

“His eyes couldn’t focus… and he couldn’t really hear what you were saying, or [figure] out where he was. So, he would sort of go to the corner of the room or try to nestle into you in order to feel safe.”

Blue Cross placed him in a foster home with experts. The fosters had worked with blind dogs before. But Dennis presented a…

George wanted to be a musician. He was born to a working-class family. His mom was the daughter of a minister. His dad was a barber.

His mom supported her son’s passion, but his dad was deadset against it. Music was a waste of time. Frivolity. George’s dad wanted him to be a barber, just like his old man. He prohibited any music in his household.

So George’s mom took matters into her own hands. She secretly bought a secondhand keyboard and placed it in the attic, where George’s father couldn’t see or hear it.

George would practice when his father was at work. Sometimes, spending all day practicing scales in the attic.

As an adult, music became George’s career. He actually became quite famous. He wrote for important people. He performed in prestigious places. But the life of a musician is an unsteady one. Audiences are fickle. Trends move fast.

As he aged, George’s career took a downturn. Nobody wanted his brand of music anymore. It was too old-school. Audiences wanted young

blood, new talent, rebels with weird hairstyles. Not old-geezer musicians who looked like your dad’s barber.

Before long, George was washed up. Work disappeared. He was drowning in debt. Soon, he was accepting donated food just to survive.

Sometimes he wished he’d listened to his dad. But it was too late to become a barber now. God knows, he was no spring chick. George was 56. This, during an era when average life expectancy for males was 45 or 50. People George’s age were considered seniors.

He downsized. He relocated to Ireland with his proverbial tail between his legs. Maybe he could find work there. Earn some money. Perhaps, rebuild whatever career he had left.

He was forced to take a job as an organist for a small Irish church. Also, he accepted charity gigs performing for places like local hospitals, prisons, and institutions for the mentally…

Meredith is a good Catholic woman. A mother of three. A pillar in her church. So, I can only assume this story about her father is true, since good Catholics never lie.

It was 1939. America was swallowed in a Great Depression. Everyone’s old man was either out of work or about to be.

The 16-year-old kid was walking home from work, carrying a loaf of bread beneath his arm. His jeans were covered in white flour. There was flour in his hair. He had flour in crevices of the body he didn’t even know existed.

After his father died, the boy dropped out of school to work at the bread factory. The job paid poorly. But it was worth the trouble because he was around food all day. His mother worked two jobs. But they were falling behind.

On the walk home, the boy stopped by the church. He knocked on the parish priest’s office door.

“I brought you sourdough this time, Father,” said the boy.

The old cleric looked up from his desk. “Oh, I love

sourdough.”

The clergyman knew the bread cost the boy more money than he had. The bread factory did not merely give away products to employees. But this bread was part of the deal.

“Are you ready for work?” said the priest with a paternal smile.

“Yes, Father.”

They walked outside to the church shed. The priest unlocked the garage door, then flicked on the lights. A half-demolished Packard sat beneath the humming lights. Dented, dinged, and rusted.

The priest popped the hood.

“Tonight we’ll begin repairing the engine block,” the old man said. “We’re going to be welding. You ever welded, son?”

“No, Father.”

“Then this is going to take a while. ”

They spent all night beneath the heavy engine, wearing goggles. They worked until 1 a.m.

This all started when the priest visited the junkyard, looking for a car to…

It was quite a day. Not the kind of day you’d expect to have inside a prison.

The holidays were fast approaching when the inmates walked into the prison’s Bible college room and were swallowed by pink.

Huge pink swaths of decorative fabric, draped from the ceiling. Pink carpets. Pink tablecloths. Pink flowers.

They weren’t dressed like inmates, either. All 29 of them wore donated tuxedos. Bowties. Shined shoes. Buttoniers, made of fresh-cut flowers. The kinds of outfits you’d never expect to wear inside Angola.

Welcome to Louisiana State Penitentiary, otherwise known as “Angola.” The facility lies smack dab in West Feliciana Parish. This is the largest state prison in the U.S. You’re looking at over 18,000 acres, 28 square miles of land, and about 6,000 inmates.

“This ain’t just a prison,” says one inmate. “Angola’s a town.”

And just like a small city, it comes with its own social norms, folkways, and culture. Prison culture hardens most inmates beyond recognition.

One Angola prisoner explains: “Imagine a thousand more such daily intrusions in your life. Every

hour and minute of every day, and you can grasp the source of this paranoia, this anger that could consume me at any moment if I lost control.”

Inmate Leslie Harris is serving a decades-long sentence for armed robbery. He’s been inside for a while. He probably won’t get out before his daughter’s first prom or graduation. He will likely miss her wedding.

But tonight, the rules of Leslie’s reality were suspended for a moment—albeit a brief one.

His evening began when 37 inmate daughters were turned loose to reunite with their inmate dads.

The girls exploded beneath floral arches and walkways, adorned with rose petals, and made pictures with their fathers. Daughters ranged from ages 5 to 20. They were wearing evening gowns. Hair fixed. Makeup. There were enough corsages to start a community rose garden.

Leslie’s daughter surprised him from behind. He…

My blind coonhound sits before our fireplace. Staring into nothingness. Caught in the darkness of her own visionless world.

“Marigold,” I call to her. I’m using my high-pitched dog falsetto.

There is an important reason I use this voice. I speak this way so I can effectively sound like an idiot. Dogs love idiots.

“What’re you doing, Mary?” I ask.

Her tail wags, ever so gently. But she simply continues gazing with her dead eye into the whistling, steaming logs.

Before we adopted Marigold, an angry hunter paid a lot of money for her as a puppy. When he discovered she was gunshy, he beat her until she went blind.

She was found chained behind a tire shop, starving. That man is still walking around, somewhere in this world, breathing free air. Whereas she lives in darkness.

I close my eyes and try to join her sightless world for a moment.

The smells of a fireplace are intoxicating. I smell woodsmoke, but that’s about all. Namely, because I am a big, goofy human. Humans can’t smell much of anything.

Humans consider themselves to be God’s most noble and cherished work of art—they’ve announced this to the world many times. But I think it’s important to note, God has admitted that, for a work of art, there’s a lot of room for improvement.

For my money, a dog is God’s masterwork. Humans are not smart enough to realize how smart dogs are.

Recently, a Border Collie named Chaser, from South Carolina, learned 1,022 words, and could distinguish between different objects by name. Scientists had no idea dogs possessed this kind of brain power.

And in the early ‘90s, Rico, another Border Collie, demonstrated a dog’s neurological ability for “fast mapping,” a skill human toddlers use for learning new words. Whenever Rico heard a new object-word, he would select the only unfamiliar object in the room, then narrow his choices down.

Scientists…

Tony James stood holding a cardboard sign on the street corner, caught in the cold drizzle.

Damp clothes. Sun-beaten skin. Moving around to keep from shivering.

Nobody really paid attention to Tony. Motorists sped around him. Most refusing to roll down windows. Avoiding eye contact.

Tony had become urban wallpaper. Almost invisible to civilized eyes. You see Tonys all the time. Standing at a stoplight. Asking for handouts. Most drivers just keep driving. Some might catch a glimpse of the little cardboard sign as they whiz past, which usually says something like, “God bless,” or “anything helps,” or “thank you.”

Tony’s sign read: “VETERAN.”

Tony James is a 44-year-old Navy vet. Tall and lean. Nice smile. This last year has been hard.

First, his appendix burst. The surgery was supposed to be straightforward, but there were complications. Mounting medical debts drained his bank account.

Then, Tony and his girlfriend lost their house and moved into their car with both of their pets: One medium-sized dog, named Elvis, and one 250-pound pot-bellied hog named Roscoe. It was only

supposed to be temporary. Just until they figured something out.

One month later, Tony’s girlfriend of 13 years died of a heart attack.

“When it rains it pours,” says Tony. “I’d like to think I got broad shoulders and I can handle things, but…” Tony pinches the bridge of his nose and sniffs.

So Tony was alone. Living in his car. With his dog. And his pig.

Roscoe the hog is about the size of a General Electric residential appliance, with coarse bristles on his back, and thick tusks growing outward from his upper jaw. Feeding a pig the size of a college draft-pick linebacker isn’t cheap. But Roscoe isn’t just a pig. Roscoe is Tony’s baby.

“My wife adopted Roscoe when he was just a piglet,” says Tony. “He’s like our son. I’d never let anything happen to him.”

And so it…

We arrived at the Christmas tree lot after dark. My wife and I walked the long aisles of pinery, scrutinizing each tree as though it were asking for our kid’s hand in marriage.

Most trees were standing erect, like soldiers undergoing inspection. Others were slumping like they were tired of playing the game.

I noticed a large family also looking at trees. They were in our aisle. Their oldest son was extremely tall. Very skinny. But very young. Maybe 15 years old, towering over all other customers by at least a foot. He had the face of an infant.

I had seen this family in the parking lot earlier. They had arrived in a rusted economy vehicle. Their clothes looked worn. And even though it was 30-odd degrees outside, some of the kids were wearing Dollar General-style flip flops.

“Which tree do we we want?” the boy’s mom asked her children.

The tall boy’s brothers and sisters meandered from tree to tree, thoughtfully remarking on each one, as though the trees were people.

“Oh, this one looks so happy!”

said one.

“No, I like this one!” said the boy’s kid sister as she shook the tree’s hand.

Meantime, the tall young man was staring at a lone tree. It was small, and seemed as though it had undergone a lifetime of malnourishment. The branches were skimpy, the trunk was not true, the top leader was crooked.

“I like this one,” the tall boy said.

“THAT one?” exclaimed Mom. “It’s puny.”

But it was too late. The boy had evidently already bonded with the tree.

“We are NOT getting that tree,” said Mom. “Are you out of your mind? I’m not wasting our money on that one.”

The boy was soft spoken and sincere. “Please, Mama.”

“Don’t be ridiculous.”

The boy explained to his mother that nobody else was going to buy this tree. It was too different. Too lean. The…

It was Christmas Eve. Pa arrived back at the cabin in the wagon. His buckboard was loaded with crates and supplies. It was snowing heavily in the Appalachians that night.

Ma and the four little girls rushed outside to help Pa unload, each child carrying heavy crates, trudging through the snow crust, fighting wind and frost.

When they finished unloading, the family was winded, huddled inside the one-room log shack, around the rock-and-mud fireplace, warming themselves.

The interior of the rough-hewn cabin was bitingly cold, and still smelled of pinesap. Their father had only finished building this cabin three days ago. It was small and crudely built. But it was theirs.

Pa collapsed in front of the hearth. His beard, painted with ice. His face, rosy from the cold, like a tomato.

“Himmel, ist das kalt!” said Pa, warming his hands.

“English, Papa,” said Ma, who forbade Deustch in her household. They were Americans now, and she insisted they speak as such.

“Sorry,” Pa said. “I

said, ‘Ist so colt outside, I cannot feel my Popo!’” Then he patted his rear for effect.

The children laughed.

“Papa?” said Saskia, the youngest, who was wearing all her winter clothes at once. The thick layers made her look like a giant stuffed animal. “Did you buy us Geschenke?”

“English, Saskia,” said Ma. “The English word is ‘gifts.’”

Pa’s face broke into a wide smile. “Gifts! Of course! I have one big, special Christmas gift for all my kleine Mädchen tonight!”

The children released peels of joy.

With that, Pa walked out to the wagon. The girls anxiously watched as Pa removed a wheel from the wagon using a mallet. He did this every night so nobody would steal their wagon.

This wagon was all they owned. Pa had spent their life savings…