{"id":4494,"date":"2013-12-21T00:21:25","date_gmt":"2013-12-21T00:21:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.unhewnstones.com\/?p=46"},"modified":"2013-12-21T00:21:25","modified_gmt":"2013-12-21T00:21:25","slug":"advent-at-the-hampton-inn","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.davidwalbert.com\/dw\/2013\/12\/21\/advent-at-the-hampton-inn\/","title":{"rendered":"Advent at the Hampton Inn"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A hotel lobby, a cramped wallflower table. The hesitant scuttle of broken fasts. The man-sized screen, brighter than a thousand votives, in whose light we see light: I avert my eyes but cannot elude the fast-pitch prophecy, the effervescent urge to self-improvement. Nor the smell of frozen waffles toasting, plastic syrup warming, chemistry-sweet, essence of a new creation of laboratory trees and orchids. I have, thankfully, already eaten. I sip what is called coffee. A man in a red shirt vacuums the welcome mat. I watch the door, upon whose glass is etched thanks in letters lowercase and agreeably spaced, lest the relative stridency of capitalization put some weary sojourner off her breakfast. I watch the door. Watch and wait, watch and wait. For what? For God? O Come, O Come Emmanuel! And lo, the glass is slid aside and there comes upon us a gust of wind, a brief uncomfortable chill from the parking lot that rolls over cleaning staff and the business traveler alike. The morning invades: then the door slides to, and we are once more shut tight against it. <span style=\"margin-left: 0.5em; letter-spacing: 0.1em;\">thanks<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A hotel lobby, a cramped wallflower table. The hesitant scuttle of broken fasts. The man-sized screen, brighter than a thousand votives, in whose light we see light: I avert my eyes but cannot elude the fast-pitch prophecy, the effervescent urge to self-improvement. Nor the smell of frozen waffles toasting, plastic syrup warming, chemistry-sweet, essence of [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true},"categories":[17],"tags":[32,167,190,368],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8I1ci-1au","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.davidwalbert.com\/dw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4494"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.davidwalbert.com\/dw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.davidwalbert.com\/dw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.davidwalbert.com\/dw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.davidwalbert.com\/dw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4494"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.davidwalbert.com\/dw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4494\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.davidwalbert.com\/dw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4494"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.davidwalbert.com\/dw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4494"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.davidwalbert.com\/dw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4494"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}