A few years ago, I stumbled into an angel. At the time, I was in a decidedly non-Christmas place, but she offered a timely reminder that my state of mind was indeed a decision.

She became the inspiration for my holiday message that year, and every season since.

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“Do you believe in Santa Claus?”

The question came from the little girl in a puffy pink jacket sitting next to me. She’d been in my seat by the window when I boarded the plane, and I’d told her as much, so she’d fumbled with her seatbelt and slid over to the aisle. By the time I squeezed past the matching pink leggings, I’d already realized how Grinch-like it was for me to tell her she was in my seat. She probably just wanted to look outside.

I asked her if she wanted to sit by the window and she said yes please and thank you and scooted back over. I settled into the aisle seat as she pulled out a beat-up Hershey’s chocolate bar from her coat pocket.

She unwrapped it, broke off half, and held it out to me.

“Do you want to share?”

She introduced me to her stuffed animal and we spent the flight playing Rock Paper Scissors and talking about the important things. She asked me if I was married and then why I wasn’t. She guessed my age and I guessed her’s. I showed her a picture of my horse and she asked me if I was sure my horse wasn’t really a camel.

She asked me if believed in Santa and told me she’d asked him for three things: to be good, to be able to study hard, and to be with her mama forever. But she knew she was getting something else too, because she had peeked in a bag her mama had brought home a few days ago.

She asked me what the tallest mountain in the world is and I said I thought it was Mt. Everest.

“Do you think God sits on top of it and watches over me and everyone?”

I sat there for a second, looking at this little girl whose face was shining and curious and real and beautiful and so full of promise and gratitude and sharing and love and all these things I think I’ve sometimes lost.

All these things that were now being given back to me by this angel sitting in seat 7E.

“Yes, I think He probably does.”

The plane touched down and rolled to a stop and she crawled over me into the aisle. As she started to walk away she turned back to say that it was nice talking to me and she hoped I’d have a Merry Christmas.

And then she was gone.

Do I believe in Santa Claus?

If he can look like a little girl in a puffy pink jacket, then yes.

I do.

Here I am, 30,000 feet in the air, turning over and under the dirt of my life. What I’ve planted. What has grown. What has died on the vine. I’ve become more and more convinced that many of our problems, individually and collectively, are rooted in a separation from nature… a deviation from respect for seasonal cycles, soil under our nails, breathing in real life. That’s why I wrote the new novel, and why I’m writing the sequel now.  And at 30,000 feet, wedged in a sterile airplane cabin, I’m about as separated from nature as possible. The seatback TV just flashed to a college football coach who’s been under disciplinary suspension, missing half the games this season, while his team played their way to the #1 ranking in the country. The major network television host offered his congratulations to the coach, who ignored the kindness and responded with all credit to God. As if his own truth should be obvious to everyone, the coach enlightened heathens like me that God’s hand had been on this team all season, helping them to win.   There was more Praise Be talk, but I’d heard enough.   Enough to know that if God’s hand was on this guy’s team, helping them to win, those Almighty fingers must not have been on the teams they beat.   God had made a choice.   I guess that’s some people’s version of God… the popular kid on the elementary school playground, picking his team from the gaggle of anxious fifth graders hoping to be chosen. I could get behind a God synonymous with the ocean, the seasons, the vastness, the pinprick of green sprouting from the soil. The popular kid, not so much. I glanced at the guy’s screen next to me. He was watching the news, and after about 20 seconds, I got the impression that God has been so busy making sure that coach’s team won, that He’d had no time to resolve the bloodshed in the Middle East. Or in Ukraine, or on the streets of this country.   I shifted my gaze back to the display in front of me, and he was still there, the college football coach, with God on his side.   Lucky him. And here I am, 30,000 feet in the air, turning over and under the dirt of my life. What I’ve planted. What has grown. What has died on the vine.