Silent Night

Alistair finished his song, still standing there with his eyes closed and his chin lifted. He always sang to God directly and tended to lose himself in it. Whether alone or in front of others, he did that and he was so lost in the reality of that that without the piano his voice continued on into, "I love You, Lord, and I lift my voice...to worship You, O my soul rejoice. Take joy, my King, in what You hear. May it be a sweet, sweet sound in Your ear."  That was always his prayer, always why he sang. Take joy, my King. That was the whole point in it all, that he might give back some of what flowed out to him, that he might not simply take, but also give.

Opening his eyes, he found Ahnna's face in the congregation. "Bless this woman," he murmured under his breath as he walked back to stand beside the pulpit again.

"Bless them all."

He never used notes to preach. He didn't actually even like that word. He wanted to talk to the people who'd come. That was all. Just talk to them. And if he didn't have it in his heart, he was not at all sure it was really worth saying.

"Bethlehem," he said, "so beautiful in all the manger scenes on Christmas cards. I would like us to take a moment, though, and get past the cards and down into the reality of the night. And as my song was about Joseph, I'd like to continue with this reality from his point of view. He was not only quite tired, you know, from walking all day; he was entirely desperate as he attempted to find a place for Mary to deliver her child. How many times did he hear 'No' that night, heard it over and over from grown men, lying in the health of their manhood, who would not give way for her. And so it was with a sinking heart he followed the rutted path into the cupping hills with the dotting campfires winking in the wind. He lifted his eyes to the canopy of stars; thinking how the campfires reflected that, reflected it as earthly things, made by human hands, a series of tiny glows beneath the spread of galaxies. Even the grottoed caves were full this night and the disinterested eyes of men followed as he walked, stumbling on the unseen rocks that lay upon the pathless path leading him away from town, leading him to the ruins at the very end.

"It was a hole, no more than that, a den among the crumbles of some shed, an excavation in the sloping hill where once foundations held a wall. Only rubble was there now, coarse trunks of trees supporting what served as its roof. He paused, sighing, the burn of rope stinging across his palm, the burn of failure stinging across his heart. 'Wait,' he said to the quiet woman drooping on the little beast, and, dropping the leading rope, he entered all alone the place determined from before the creation of the world to receive the coming of its King on this clear and frigid night near Bethlehem.

"Taking free the sack he'd carried across his shoulders all this way, he pulled his flint and tinder forth, lighting a small lamp, finding only one large ox chewing hay far in the rear. It will do. It has to do. There is simply nothing else. And so, gently, he led her in. Trembling with cold, she went near the ox, laying hands on its warming neck. He stood a moment, looking at the vault above, ancient cobwebs glimmering in his lamp's light, stretching from rock to rubbled rock, spanning all the cracks and holes. Then his eyes turned downward to where the floor was covered with cast-off trash, with excrement of animals. How could THIS be the appointed place? He could such a One as Mary carried come here to find His gate?

"She sat now on a broken seat made from two big rocks, watching with her silent, large brown eyes as he bent to gather hay from just beside the ox. She needed a bed, a place to lie, and his thoughts raced, bumping together in the dark. He stood; both hands filled with the hay, and looked at the pale starlight on her face, then at the filth that covered the dirt floor. His heart lurched, squeezed with pain, and he set the hay in a heaping pile. With a little bunch of twigs for his tool, he scratched at the dirt, in bent awkwardness, pushing excrement far off to the side. How could he lay the straw upon such a base as that? How could...He...be born atop the world's filth?

"The straw, regathered, was damp in his strong hands, the rain of yesterday having fallen on it through the cracking roof. In a blackened corner, used to shepherd fires, he took his twigs and lit them with his lamp, then squatted, holding out fistfuls of straw. He would not have her lying on the damp. His thigh muscles strained and ached, but still he squatted, holding fistful after fistful, turning, drying by the little blaze till he was satisfied and piled it up for her, a little bed, all that he is able to provide."

Maximus squeezed Joimus' hand. He was a Stoic, but he was relating to this story as a man who loved, who cared, who protected.

"A shadowed shape passed by the door, some other looking for a place to spend the night. No, he would not have eyes peering in, not as she does what she must, not as He in blood and tears makes His way into the world. Shivering, he removed his mantle, finding means to hang its woolen brownness over the holed door, sealing them inside with its thin protection, billowing slightly as the wintered breeze came and went, within, without the cave.

"Huddling now beneath her mantle on the straw, her brown eyes watch his slumping back, knowing his manhood is offended that he cannot offer her more than this, that he was not able to lay her in a better place. 'Joseph,' she says the word softly as he turns, wanting him to see the love-light in her eyes, wanting him to know it is enough that he is here with her in this moment and all she needs surrounds her on this night.

"As quietly as possible he broke the little sticks, feeding them slowly to the tiny fire, the feeling long-gone from his frozen toes. Closing tired eyes, he heard the chewing sounds of his burro bedded now close beside the ox. In the little flickering light, she watches him, his hands pressed tightly to his face, lost now in deep prayer. Her own hands on her mounded self, felt now the heaving, tightening of her inner being, as He made His way into the human world.

"Then it is done, as is the way of such as this, that way that women know when even those more ordinary leave the round, warm safety of the womb and by the tearing of the flesh enter into worlds, fresh and new. Joseph, kneeling beside her, received into his workman's hands the Maker of everything that was ever made. No aunt, no mother, no elder was there that night to fulfill the womanly task usual then at birth. Only he...he with his large hands scarred from work. He looked, utterly dumbfounded at what he held, the tiny, wriggling form of God now in the flesh. His hands burned with his own unworthiness that he, of all men in the world, should be the first to hold the form of God.

"Overwhelmed, he held Him, arms stretched out, not knowing what to do. What DOES one do when newborn God is squirming in one's hands, a thing in all creation's time that no one else would ever know like this. But the tiny form, still warm from Mary's belly, rapidly began to chill in the winter night, the little feet cold now against his hand. And, so, he tucked Him inside his tunic, close against his chest, against his beating heart, and folded his arms across the newborn form of God. It is then he knew that his heart is flowing...his own heart has turned into liquid bands of light and stretched itself from out his chest and circled round the little being cuddling close. Lifting up his bearded chin, the morning star shone through a hole, puddling on his face, turning the cobwebs into diamonds strung, each rubbled rock into some silvered throne. And he saw with his spirit's opened eyes, the royal canopy of the grotto's spanning vault. Then he knew that everything was right...wet straw, the webs, the ox, and broken roof...all of it, every single part, was right...for the Kingdom comes when and where it wills, turning cobwebs into silver in the night."

Alistair paused, looking again at the people who had come this night. "It is more beautiful, I think, in its reality than in all the versions where everything is clean and neat and warm. God came to turn our cobwebs into silver with His light. His birth is His statement of that." He smiled affectionately at these people he was only beginning to know and led them in singing Silent Night while Bridgid played the piano.