There is a font at the entrance to our hospital chapel. The water is, I suppose, holy water. I assume the priest who serves patients at the hospital, who offers Mass every day, who blesses us all with his heart and hands, also occasionally blesses the water.

Chaplains are responsible to clean the font every two weeks. It’s a policy. We drain it, carry the glass bowl to the sink in the sacristy and scrub it, change the small hose that runs from the aquarium air pump to the bottom of the bowl, refill it with distilled water, and put our initials by the date in the log.

On Sunday, I did the process for the last time and put my initials at the bottom of the log page that had started mid-2022. My initials are in most of those spaces, with MB (Matt Beck) starting to show up.

The previous page had a big gap. The font was empty for a long time during COVID. The pages before that most often had KG. Kent Green.

Kent was one of our chaplains, one who would tell you that he finally found his calling when he started working as a chaplain. He was faithful about font cleaning and about many other details of our work. He was faithful about making sure I knew how to do the work. He was a good chaplain and a good friend and a good husband and a good dad. And he died in August.

For many people, saying “Merry Christmas” always has an asterisk. There’s a sigh, a rush of memory. This year, for Kent’s family and friends, the asterisk is Kent-shaped. This year, for you and people you know, there are your own sighs and memories and asterisks.

A few years back, I started saying, “May you have some happy in your Christmas.” It feels more honest. It’s what I offer you today.