The Wise Ones: A Christmas Story

It was dark and dusty. That’s mostly what I recall. That’s when the dream first started. We were in a circus – doing an act called The Wise Ones. It was a clown show, honestly.

Maybe you’ve heard of us. We used to be called the Wise Guys, but one of the founding members, whose name was actually Guy, dropped out and we replaced him with a woman. So we weren’t the guys any more. You work with what you’ve got.

We do a Christmas Eve show for street people somewhere around the country every year. We raise some money for shelters, and that sort of thing, but mostly we like to bring some smiles to faces of folks living on the streets when we can. We’ve been doing if for a long time.

There are three of us: Joe, Mary and me.

Now I know what you’re thinking: it’s Christmas Eve and here’s another Joseph and Mary story. But it wasn’t like that. For one thing, Mary was not great with child, and she and Joe were not about to bear God into the world in those days. That just happened to be their names, and this stuff just happened to happen around Christmas.

But we were thousands of miles, not to mention thousands of years, from the little town of Bethlehem.

We were, in fact, a lot closer to the little town of Flagstaff. Winter there is not like here. It’s probably a bit closer to winter in the Middle East, at least in terms of temperature. There was no “snow on snow” or ground like iron. Like I said, it was dusty.

I didn’t pay much attention the first time I had the dream. Just a weird passing fuzzy dream about a young woman who seemed to be living on the streets. I remember waking up like Ebenezer Scrooge, but instead of the ghost of Christmas Past or Present or Still to Come, it was more like the ghost of Chris Farley had visited me and the phrase, “in a van by the river” kept ringing in my mind.

It wasn’t like I had been watching old SNL reruns, either. Just out of the blue, this vision of a young woman, living in a beat up old van, down by a river somewhere.

I paid a little closer attention the second time around. The same dream: young woman, on the streets, in a van, by a river. But this time another detail stuck with me upon waking: this young woman was great with child.

That afternoon, as we were doing yet another run-through of our act, I told Joe and Mary about the dream.

“You mean you’ve had the same dream two straight nights?” Mary asked. “Weird.”

“Yeah. I don’t ever remember having the same basic dream on two consecutive nights. What do s’pose it means?”

“That you had the same cold pizza after the show two straight nights,” Joe said. “I’ve been warning about that stuff.”

“Guys,” Mary said, “we are the Wise Ones. Isn’t this exactly the kind of thing we’re s’posed to figure out?”

“Uh, Mary,” I said, “that’s just an act, and we’re clowns. Remember.”

“Hey, you work with what you’ve got,” said. It was kind of a motto with us.

Still, her comment got me to thinking.

Our shtick for the show was that Mary played a “seer” and Joe and I played a couple of dunces who came to her seeking wisdom and direction. We’d take suggestions from the audience about our “problems” and then do an improv skit where Joe and I were always the butts of the jokes. At some point, one us would inevitably say, “hey, you work with what you’ve got.”

The dream was like a bit what someone might call out from the audience: “save a princess who’s down on her luck.”

That was about all the thought I gave it, until waking up the next morning in a cold sweat having had the exact same dream for a third night in a row. This was getting downright spooky. The exact same dream: young woman, on the streets, sleeping in a van, by a river, she was pregnant. Every time I dreamed, it seemed, a bit more was revealed. This time I noticed, quite clearly, the Washington Monument in the background.

“What do you think it means?” I asked as I finished telling Joe and Mary about the dream’s recurrence. “And, no, I didn’t have pizza last night,” I said in Joe’s direction.

“Why don’t we go find out?” Mary said.

“Huh?”

“Let’s go. Tonight is our last show before Christmas. We’ve got about two weeks off before the show starts up again. Besides, we’ll be in Florida then, so we’re heading East. Let’s follow the dream.”

“That’s the craziest thing I ever heard,” Joe said, and I tended to agree. “Besides,” he said, “we don’t have a clue where to go.”

“Sure we do,” Mary said. “Washington. By the river. In a van.”

“Yeah. Right,” I said.

“Look, guys, we’re always saying we wish we’d have something happen in our real lives that’s half as interesting as the improv junk that we play with. This may be a dream, but DC is a real city. Let’s go. What do we have to lose?”

The truth was, we didn’t have anything to lose. None of us had real plans for Christmas anyway. All three of us were pretty much circus orphans, and we’d been planning to hang out in Flagstaff until after New Years. The height of the seasonal celebration would probably be Chinese food and a good bottle of wine we’d share in our van.

So the next morning we pulled up stakes and headed east.

As we sipped coffee in the van Joe asked, “so, did you dream it again?”
“Yeah,” I said slowly. “This time there was a guy with her.”

“Her husband?” Joe asked.

“Boyfriend?” Mary chipped in.

“Not clear,” I said, “but probably one or the other. He definitely seemed like he was trying to take care of her.”

So it went. We drove. We speculated. We napped. We crashed in cheap motels. Each night the dream recurred. Each morning I filled the wise ones in on the new detail. The young woman and young man were definitely a couple, but it was impossible to know if they were married. It was also impossible to know if he was the father of the child. They were definitely dirt poor, because one night I dreamed that they were going from church to church asking for help. Mostly they got some nice words.

One little church had a beat up old manger filled with socks and snacks and hats and gloves, and the young couple got some food and warm clothes from them.

The night before the evening we arrived I dreamed that the baby was born. The young woman wrapped him – the baby was a boy – in some of the undershirts they’d gotten from the little church in the dream from the night before.

“Hey,” Mary said, “should we pick up some stuff for this baby?”

“What baby?” Joe asked.

“The dream baby,” Mary said. “What if he’s real? If we’ve driven all the way across the country following a dream, it would look pretty stupid if it turns out to be real and we didn’t even bring something with us.”

“What should we bring?”

“Well, there’s the obvious,” I said. “Gold, frankincense, myrrh.”

“Yeah. Or we could bring something useful,” Mary said.

“Well, how about, instead of gold, a little cold hard cash,” said Joe. “How much do we have?”

We checked wallets and backpacks and came up with exactly $65.73 in cash.

“Well, if this is for real, whoever sent me the dreams might’ve picked a rich guy instead of a wise guy. It’s what we’ve got, though I reckon we could get some more cash if you want.”

“What else?”

“Let’s take some obvious things: a bit of food and some diapers,” Joe said.

“What’s the dreamer think?” Mary asked.

“You know, they both seem so alone in these dreams. I think that’s why I remembered the first one. Lonely. Sad. I think we should do our show for them.”

“If we find them.”

“If there is a them to find.”

“Hey guys,” Mary said. “I almost forgot: it’s Christmas Eve.”

We’d all forgotten. A hazy winter sun was setting behind us as we drove east on I-66 through the outer suburbs of the capital city. We really had no clue where to go, or what we were looking for.

At pretty much the same time, though, we realized that we were hungry, so we got off the interstate in one of the close in suburbs. I think it was Arlington, and we found a Starbucks still open.

Over Christmas Eve mint-mochas we wondered about the craziness of this journey, and about where we should go next. We’d looked at maps, and realized that with two rivers there were miles of shoreline and plenty of places for a van to park – if there really was a van by the river with a young couple and a newborn baby.

Mary was the one who noticed the flyer.

“Christmas on the streets,” it read. It advertised a Christmas Eve service for street people in a park that, according to our GPS, was pretty near the river. It was supposed to begin in less than an hour.

“Guys,” Mary said, “we have to go to this. Whatever else happens on this crazy trip, let’s go sing some Christmas carols.”

Fortified with caffeine and sandwiches, we followed the GPS, which, if you think of it, is a whole lot like following a star.

We wound up at a park, and it was easy from there. There was a small fire burning in a fire pit, and a rough circle of folks keeping warm around it. In the center of the circle a young woman wearing clerical garb moved from person to person shaking hangs, sharing brief hugs, laughing at quiet asides. She obviously knew many of the folks in the circle.

Then my heart skipped a beat. On the far side of the circle, standing a bit apart from everyone else, was a young couple. The woman was holding a baby. The man stood with has arms wrapped around the young woman, as if to shield her from the cold.

Could it be?

I nudged Mary, who was nudging Joe, who was looking at the same couple. The three of us exchanged glances, shrugged our shoulders, and moved as one toward the small family.

By now the preacher had called the crowd together, and gathered people in prayer. We walked quietly around the circle and stopped next to the man. The preacher was telling the familiar Christmas story, “shepherds keeping watch over their flocks by night when suddenly the angel of the Lord came upon them … ‘fear not, for I bring you good tidings of great joy which shall be for all people.’”

After another prayer, the preacher invited us to share a word of peace with each other, and that’s when I turned to the little family, not at all sure what I was going to say.

I stammered out, “you’re not going to believe this, you might think we’re crazy, but we’ve driven from Arizona this week to give you some, uh, some stuff. Peace be with you.” We handed the man three big shopping bags stuffed with diapers and baby clothes and bread and peanut butter. He looked utterly confused as we loaded his arms. His girlfriend smiled wide-eyed as we pressed the money into her hand.

By that point, the preacher had the circle singing O Come All Ye Faithful with a ragged beauty.

As the song ended, the preacher looked around the circle and proclaimed, “a light shines in the darkness tonight, and the darkness shall never overcome it. Where ever you lay your head tonight, let the light shine on you, in you, and through you, for you are beloved. Merry Christmas.”

The young woman tugged on my jacket sleeve and asked, simply, “why?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “I had a dream. I hope this stuff helps y’all take care of that baby.”

“Who are you?” she asked.

“We’re just circus performers between shows; seriously, we’re clowns, but if it helps you remember, we’re called ‘The Wise Ones.’ It’s a great joke. We’re fools enough to follow dreams all the way across the country. We’ve been doing it for a long time, I reckon. It’s what clowns and fools do.”

I hadn’t noticed, but the preacher was standing next us and had apparently overheard the story.

“It’s what followers of Jesus do, too,” she said. “For a long time. Hey, ‘merry Christmas,’” she added with a laugh. “If you guys really are circus clowns, could you do a show for us?”

“Sure,” Joe said.

Which is how we wound up doing our first ever Christmas Eve show for a young woman living on the streets, sleeping in a van, by a river. We’ve done lots of them since, bringing the wisdom of fools and some laughs to people who need them. You can be part of the show if you want to. Help out where you can. Give what you can, even if it’s only a smile. Do what you can where you are with what you’ve got, and together we’ll bring a little light into the darkness. Work with what you’ve got. Merry Christmas.