My Buckeye Pen has been quiet on here lately. I should explain why.

We are in the midst of a big audit where I work. The Big Wigs have canceled all our leave since Thanksgiving, and we are working eleven and twelve hour days. With drive time plus an hour's more physical therapy on each end of my day, it doesn't leave me much Christmas Cheer. Jenny has likewise been burdened where she teaches trying to keep fed the data-munching machine known as No Child Left Behind. There are no pretty lights on our front porch this year or presents under our tree yet.

She and I describe it as "Feeding the System"! We have talked. We both wonder....at a time when were are still working not because we have to, but because we want to and think we can make a real difference (she in the lives of her special needs tots and me with our good earth)....how did our society become counters rather than doers?

I am reminded of the story of the two farmers. In the spring of the year, they were each given a bag with an identical number of beans and told to "Account" for them. Farmer A immediately opened his and counted every one of the 200,000 beans before putting them back in the bag in the bag. Farmer B on the other hand dumped them into a woven basket and leveled them off to determine that he had exactly one bushel.

When the earth warmed, Farmer A was tired of just counting his beans, so he organized them into two rows, one of round beans and one of oblong beans. Farmer B on the other hand, carried his to a one-acre field, scattered them all over the place, and lightly covered them with soil. In the process, he lost a few, the mice ate some, and of course, he could no longer see his beans nor know for sure how many he had.

As spring turned to summer, Farmer A found his rows too boring to count. So he further subdivided his beans all summer....he organized them into round gold ones, oblong brown ones, big ones, little ones, to the point where he could count them not once a month, but once a day. Shucks, by the end of the summer he could count them hourly. Farmer B in contrast spent the summer hoeing weeds and chasing bugs away and didn't have any time to count his beans.

When fall arrived Farmer A still had exactly 200,000 beans and the original bag they came in. Farmer B didn't have any clue how many beans he had, but he went to his field, gathered them up, and discovered they now filled forty bushel baskets instead of one. He dumped them all into a bin where they would be safe for the winter. At that point, the bean department auditor arrived!

In his audit report, the auditor lauded farmer A and recommended a promotion. "He knows not only exactly where every bean is," the auditor wrote, "but also its size, shape and color!" Farmer B unfortunately didn't fare too well. The termination letter read... "Farmer B violated all principles of bean control. He let them out of his sight, some were lost, damaged or open to theft, and the remaining beans are 'commingled' with 8 million other beans, so it is impossible to count the original beans or even know if any are still there"...

It has been easy to get discouraged in all of this, until I remembered the reason we do all the holiday traditions we are this year missing. Ours is not the first counting story. More than two thousand years ago, Mary and Joseph traveled to the city of their birth. Then as now it had been decreed on high there would be a count. In the midst of that count, a child was born to bring us goodness and light. All the decrees then were nothing compared to the effect of that tiny child lying in the manger.

The Christmas wish from our house to yours is that in these difficult times as a people and a nation, we remember the message of that child long ago, a gift of peace on earth good will towards men, and that we will all find ways to count the things that truly count.

All The Best and Peace be with you this Holiday Season and in the coming year.