A Deep River Year
December 24, 2014

Today is Christmas Eve. In anticipation of the family being together to celebrate this wonderful holiday, I was in the kitchen last night amid a flurry of flour and sugar and lots and lots of butter. The cookies are done, and the next round of baking will be in the wee hours tomorrow morning when I make the Swedish tea ring in honor of my grandfather and fry up the Ferden (sugared German doughnuts) in memory of my father, whose cast iron aebleskiver pan is hauled out once a year for this purpose.

But tonight we will go to the old white church where a host of costumed children will put on the annual Christmas Pageant. One of the tinsel-haloed cherubs sitting by the manger will fall asleep, and another will make faces in the spotlight. One of the Wise Men will forget the words to his verse of "We Three Kings," and a shepherd will be caught with his finger up his nose. The Baby Jesus will cry his lungs out in spite of his parents' efforts to render him groggy with milk an hour before the play. All of this is as it should be. Around midnight we will gather in the church again to light candles and sing "Silent Night." As we sing I will be thinking of the father whom I held in my arms a few days ago. He had just lost his son in a terrible car accident and was inconsolable. There will be no silent night for him, no "calm and bright," no heavenly peace.

The mystery of Christmas, though, is that we perform these ancient rites in spite of heartbreak and loss, in the midst of a world that is fractured by violence and hatred, because we need to believe that something bigger--perhaps Love itself--holds us. Sometimes it feels like a dream. Last Sunday during the carol sing in our church we all joined in a chorus of "White Christmas." The snow was falling gently outside the tall, clear glass windows in the old building, and it just seemed right, even though it is certainly not a religious song. But it stirs something deep in us--this dream of a world bright and shining and full of love. It is one of the most spiritual yearnings of all, the thing that can make us good. In the end, it is really not something bigger that holds us, but something very small. It is the crying baby in the straw, the sleeping angel, the dream I wish for every weeping father--that even the smallest love is stronger than all the darkness, all the hurt.

Somewhere a Star

Somewhere a star
 gleams in the darkest night,
 pure as the promise
 that once glittered
 in a Bethlehem sky.
 It is for us who journey
 on a lonely road,
 or who have forgotten
 where we are going.
 It shines where no other beauty
 can be seen,
 a mystery and a wonder,
 a cosmic explosion that to us
 is just a point of light
 in our tiny, shadowed world,
 a little thing to follow
 when our sun has set.
 Sometimes that star
 is all we have,
 the thing on a dark and holy night
 that kindles a spark of hope in us--
 unlikely as it may seem--
 reminds us that love invades the world,
 shines a light that leads us home.

 --Timothy Haut, December 24, 2014