Years ago when we were considering new ways to engage members of the community in Christmas worship, the Parish I was serving decided to offer a service called A Quiet Christmas. We gathered in the round at the back of the church on Christmas Eve between the time of our Carols Around the Creche family service and our more formal O Holy Night midnight communion service. There were about 15 of us in total. I asked a local singer/songwriter if she would lead music with her voice and guitar. She had written a poem about the Nativity story that eventually became a song called, appropriately enough, The Christmas Story. I’d heard her sing it a few weeks back at a CD launch. In introducing the song, she acknowledged that she was agnostic, but there was “just something about the Christmas story” that she found compelling.
“No matter what you believe,” she said at the CD launch, “you have to admit that this little story had a big impact on the world.”
“You have to admit that this little story had a big impact on the world.”
I was intrigued. Asking someone who was unsure about what she believed, yet felt moved to write about the Nativity, to lead music for us on Christmas Eve seemed so right. It is, after all, a night when we hear about shepherds hearing the song of angels and following a star to an unlikely birthplace for the Saviour of the World. It is a night of mystery and wonder.
That evening, in between the telling of the Christmas story from the Gospel of Luke, we sang gentle carols and offered prayers. There was no homily. We simply gathered in a circle with the creche as our focal point and worshipped together. Donna’s song drew us in. This, too, was holy space, holy time.
As I look ahead to the seasons of Advent and Christmas, I find myself looking back again to that night so many years ago when I heard the Christmas story in a new way. Like you, I suspect, I have heard this story before so many times in word and in song and yet, somehow, it was as if Donna was giving birth to “this little story” afresh. The words of her song echoed deep within me: “a brand-new tale, born this night.”
We each have the power and possibility to make Christ known, even in our uncertainty; to give birth to hope in our time and place. We are not all singers, songwriters, poets or writers, and we don’t have to be. We all have the capacity within us to reveal the love of God in Christ in how we live in the world; in how we allow “this little story” to transform our lives. I can’t help but think of the words of the German mystic, Meister Eckhart (1260-1328):
We are all meant to be mothers of God.
What good is it to me if this eternal birth of the divine Son takes place unceasingly, but does not take place within myself?
And, what good is it to me if Mary is full of grace if I am not also full of grace?
What good is it to me for the Creator to give birth to his Son if I do not also give birth to him in my time and my culture?
This, then, is the fullness of time: When the Son of Man is begotten in us.
In her song, Donna notes how this story was passed “from shepherd to king,” how it “emboldened the seers,” and how it “bunched up its courage and learned how to fly.” This story continues to be passed on by you and me. How will you share it? How will you “give birth” to this message of hope through your life? How might Christ be begotten in you this year?
With every blessing for Advent and Christmas,
+ Sandra
(Editor’s note: You can hear Donna’s song by clicking on the link in our online edition of the Diocesan Times.)
