The Real Wisdom of Scrooge

Ebenezer Scrooge

I am a connoisseur of Scrooges--know them all, and got their lines down!  That's why I sat transfixed at the Scrooge on the stage of Ford's Theater.  He threw out a different line at the very end--or at least the playwright did.  There stand the 3 people who very much in financial debt.  Scrooge forgives them. They are ecstatic--"Oh, Sir we are so in debt to you!"  "No," says Scrooge, "it is I who am in debt to you."  He has learned through them, by being with them--and fully engaged with their spirit just where real wealth lies.  I had never heard that line before--"no I am in debt to you."  What would happen if we had that regard for each other?  Sometimes I fear that the bitter partisanship--the instrument which killed Lincoln at Ford's theater--infects us all in how we treat each other.  How many of us live quite literally with a no tolerance zone--people step into it and "wham!"  A Christmas Carol is the story of the Gospel in a man who turned all of his relationships around simply because he turned his heart and mind around from engaging with those in need.  I never pass up one of those people ringing the bell around the red pot--and that's only where it begins!