PleaseGrace

A Christmas Eve Meditation

I had a thought this past week while getting ready for tonight.  But first, let me tell you where I was when the thought came to me.  I was on the phone trying to get in touch with the physical therapist at the nursing home where my father-in-law now lives.  Like me, my father-in-laws’s name is David, though he goes by Dave, which helps to distinguish whose gifts are whose under the tree on Christmas morning.  11 years ago, Dave suffered an automobile accident that cost him both his arms.  He started out one morning with ten fingers and two elbows and by night fall he didn’t have them anymore.  To this day, no one can truly say how the accident came about.  Sometimes, life is just cruel.  But I have also found that life has a necessarily good response to cruelty.  My mother-in-law, along with a whole village of neighbors, family, and friends have been that response. 

My mother-in-law advocated from the beginning that her husband could walk again (because the accident also completely destroyed Dave’s knees), and balance and feed himself again, and that whatever he couldn’t figure out how to do on his own, she’d do with him.  And for 11 years they’ve lived happily and securely in their straight front colonial.  But a couple months ago, Dave got up from his seat at the kitchen counter, turned right for the living room, and crumpled to the floor. At the hospital, the x-ray showed no signs of trouble. I guess his legs had just gone far enough.

To get the necessarily good response we’ve come to believe in, we all helped Dave move into a nursing home.  The staff there are extraordinarily kind, as is Dave’s roommate, a gruff but gentle soul of a man named Willard who likes to listen to 50s Doo-wop music.

A few days ago, however, I was trying to get in touch with the physical therapist at the nursing home to ask about a wheelchair.  When I called, this is what I heard instead: “If you know your party’s extension, you may dial it at any time.  For a list of staff names, press 1.”  What’s this? I wondered annoyedly.  Where’s Karen the receptionist?  She always answers the phone like I imagine Mary answered the cries of Jesus.  Now, now, this is Karen, how can I help you?  She must have stepped away to go to the bathroom or on vacation. 

I didn’t know the extension I wanted, and I wasn’t sure I knew how to spell the name of Dave’s physical therapist, so I lazily pressed 0 for the operator.  “Hello, this is the nurse’s station.”  Even better, I thought.  “Hi.  Could you transfer me to the PT?”  “Sure, please  hold for a moment.”  I waited, and waited, and waited.  When it was clear no one was going to pick up, not even an answering machine, I hung up and called back.  Maybe Karen will be back from the bathroom. 

“If you know your party’s extension, you may dial it at any time.  For a list of staff names, press 1.”  I pressed 0 again.  I’ll take my chances on getting a nurse again, which I did.  “Hi.  I was trying to get in touch with physical therapy, but the transfer didn’t go through.”  “Sorry about that.  I know no one is in their office at this time, but I’ll put you through directly to their voicemail.”  “Thank you, that would be fine.”  I waited, and waited, and waited, and this time I did hear something.  It was that horrible trilling sound you get just before you know you’re about to be hung up on, the sound of a fax machine stuck in 1989, and then, beeeeeeeep… 

Alright, one more time.  I called back.  Come on Karen, come on Karen.  “If you know your party’s extension, you may dial it at…”  I pressed 0.  Cruelly, I didn’t even say hello when the nurse picked up this time.  “I think your voicemail system is broken,” I declared, though let’s be honest, I was accusing.  “Could you just take a message for me and ask the physical therapist to call me?”  “I’m sorry,” she said, “but we don’t take messages.  We have a voicemail system for that.”  “Yes, but it’s clear your system is broken.” 

Eventually, the nurse did take a message for me, but in that moment all I could think was, Karen would never have let things get this bad.

Back to my thought about tonight.  What if you had had to dial in?  Would it really have been much different?  After all, it’s not like any of us didn’t know what we’d be getting by showing up here together.  In many ways, Christmas Eve is a lot like gift buying these days.  Speaking only for myself of course, because I’m sure you never do this, we hardly ever go to a store to browse for a gift anymore.  We go online knowing what it is that we’re going to buy, because the person we’re getting the gift for probably told us what to buy, and where to buy it, including the color, size, and what to get instead if the item is already sold-out.

Similarly, didn’t we come out tonight knowing, even expecting, what we’d find?  A church sanctuary dressed to the nines; a buzz in the air from all the kids who can’t wait to go to bed so Santa can come; Silent Night, candlelight, and the story of the birth of Jesus.  Call me a fool, but couldn’t we have just dialed this one in?  “If you know your party’s extension you may dial it any time.  To hear the Christmas story read aloud, press 1.  To hear someone announcing the birth of Jesus, press 2. To hear Silent Night, press 3.  To hear these options again, press 4.”

I wonder if Mary and Joseph had the same thought when the notice came to their door saying they’d have to go to Bethlehem.  Mary was already 8 months pregnant with a baby neither she nor Joseph figured on having.  She might deliver any day now, and here comes Rome telling them they must go to Bethlehem.  Everyone back to where you came from.  It’s going to be a long, cold journey.  It’s already been a long, cold journey. Mass deportation.  Refugee resettlement in reverse.  Sometimes, life is just cruel.

I wonder if the thought came to them again when they got back home to Bethlehem only to find, as the old story puts it, no room in the inn.  What kind of homecoming is this?  A home that isn’t home anymore.  Sometimes, life is just cruel.

And did they have this same thought when the only place available to them was a manger fit for cows and pigs?  Well, that figures.  If you know your party’s extension you may dial it at any time… [trilling sound…beeeeeeeep…].

Hear me, please, I don’t mean to suggest that just because we already knew how this night was going to go that we should have just dialed it in.  But let me ask you, what have you come out for?  For what have you left the comforts of your own home this night? I think I know.

I think you have come because you know life can be cruel sometimes, and while there are plenty of people who will dial Christmas in this year, those who wish to have a truly merry Christmas must draw near and show themselves to be human.

One night a couple weeks ago, I went Christmas caroling with about 30 people from my church. Our last stop of the night was to see our friend Jed.  Jed’s home is perched at the top of a small hill.  While most of us climbed the hill to stand as close as we could to Jed’s front porch and to Jed, during the first verse of our first carol I looked out from where I was standing next to Jed to see one of the members in our group, Peg, standing alone at the bottom of the hill, leaning up against a car.  She was still singing.  God bless her, she was singing loud enough to make sure Jed could hear her from afar.  But understandably, she didn’t want to climb the hill and risk a slip or fall.

Sometime during the singing of verse two I looked up again to find Peg, and that’s when I saw it: another member of our group, Annie, going down the hill to stand beside her.  It was Annie, and there was nothing dramatic about the scene.  It was ordinary, unsophisticated.  As ordinary and unsophisticated as Karen answering the phone at the nursing home, now, now, how may I help you?  As ordinary and unsophisticated as the sight of an old man trying to stand and walk on his own.  As ordinary and unsophisticated as a poor couple looking for a room in a town with no rooms, and a baby being born among cows and pigs.  As ordinary and unsophisticated as this night when we could have just dialed in for Christmas, because didn’t we already know what we’d be getting?  Silent Night, candlelight, the story of the birth of Jesus.

But to those who would draw near, there is nothing ordinary and unsophisticated about this night.  For in drawing near, we are saying, we will not dial in for Christmas.  Rather, we will do like God and show ourselves to be human.  We will be the ones who pick up the phone to say, now, now, how may I help you?  We will be the ones who open our door and make room for the poor.  We will be the ones who go up the hill, and down the hill, to stand beside one another.  We will be the ones who, with our little light, bear the darkness.  We will be the ones who, when we hear the angel say, “Unto you has been born this day a Savior,” do not keep the good news to ourselves.  And therefore, we will be the ones to sing joy to the world, peace on earth, goodwill to all.

One day last week, while driving to pick up my children at school, I saw up ahead a car stopped in the lane on the other side of the road.  As I got closer, I could see the driver, a man about my father’s age, jump out his door and then slam it shut. Stomping over to the car behind him, which was also now stopped, he began pounding his fist on the driver’s side window, yelling things through the glass that should never be repeated.  The driver of that car was also a man of about my father’s age.  He was gesticulating wildly at the other man. I’m sure, if anyone could have asked them what was going on, the man in the first car would have said that the man in the second car was riding his bumper, while the man in the second car would have said that the man in the first car was driving slower than necessary.

My first thought in seeing this scene was, now these things wouldn’t happen if we all just walked more!  But you and I both know that’s not true, because there are plenty of people walking in New York City today who also can’t get to where they’re going fast enough. My second thought was to pull my own car over to the side of the road and call for three tow trucks; not two, not just one for each of the raging men, but one also for me.  Then, I would have told the two men to sit down on the curb and get comfy because we’re not going anywhere for nine months. 

Nine months.  That’s a full-term pregnancy.  It’s the amount of time Mary is going to have to carry Jesus all the way to Bethlehem, the amount of time it takes to get a new life.

I am absolutely convinced that the problems of our world are not new.  We have always been trying to get a piece of the pie for ourselves.  Speeding ahead to get to the table first before anyone else.  And when we can’t get there fast enough, we pound on the window of our neighbor and yell it’s their fault for going too slow in front of us.  While our neighbor in front of us yells, it’s your fault for going too fast behind me.  We are so quick to react and too quick to demand.   

But can you imagine how differently things might have turned out for those two men and I had we sat down on the curb together for nine months?  For one thing, we’d still be there.  And we would have had to figure out by now how to keep each other warm at night, and how to stop a car three times a day to ask for food.  I’m guessing that by now we also would have learned each other’s names, who our family is, and where we were all going on that day when our rage got the better of us. 

The flyers in my mailbox lately, along with the ads on my TV, tell me there are lots of nice gifts we could buy or get this Christmas. But if it’s peace you want this year, can I recommend, dear reader, that you get the gift that will require nine months of assembly?

Spend nine months sitting across the table from someone who doesn’t share your views on religion, politics, life.  Tell yourself that you will take the time to listen and learn.  Let that be your gift. 

Spend nine months repairing a broken relationship, because while we can bandage a wound in a second, healing takes time and intention. 

Spend nine months trying to buy only fairtrade items that will also help support the underserved members of our communities and world.  I promise you, at the end of those nine months, it won’t just be a refugee or a child victim of slave labor or a hungry neighbor whose life is changed for the better, it will be your life too.

Spend nine months attending a support group.  Give yourself that much deserved chance at recovery.  Or go be a sponsor for someone who needs a friend. 

Spend nine months volunteering with a Boys or Girls Club in town, coaching Special Olympics, or teaching a child to read.  

Spend nine months volunteering in the NICU at the hospital holding babies, especially the ones who arrived on this planet earlier than expected and who will need some extra TLC to help them get going. While you’re at it, hold out your arms to their parents too, and to all the mamas who grieve the babies only they got to know.

Spend nine months watering some dandelion you pulled out of the concrete while sitting on a curb licking your wounds and catching your breath. See how easy it is to bestow the gift of life.

It is one of the strangest things in the world to me: my dog’s love of all things smelly.

I can understand her love of fresh pizza when it comes through the front door on a Friday night.  I get why she scurries under the kitchen table before we have even sat down at it ourselves.  She loves straight-out-of-the-oven meatloaf even more than I do.  But six-day old leftover spaghetti that I probably should have thrown out, and would have, if not for conscience and the fact that I haven’t gotten to the grocery store in seven days?  It doesn’t seem to matter to my dog.  It’s all good to her.  She pokes her wet nose out from her hiding spot, pushing back the edge of the tablecloth to catch a whiff. 

When we go on a walk, she cranes her neck left to right, sticking her snout upward to where only she knows, because I can’t see what she’s smelling.  But the way her paws start to dance, her rear end jigs, she looks like a kid in a candy shop whose just been told to pick out as much as she wants.  I think she’s smelling the wind carrying the fragrance of the pine trees lining the street up ahead.  Dogs are so good at appreciating what they can’t even see.  Fifty yards down the road and around a bend we haven’t even reached yet is my neighbor walking her dog.  They’re coming towards us, and we’re going towards them, but only the dogs know it.  They smell the scent of a friend not far off and can hardly contain their joy.  O to live like a dog!

She will stop for the smallest piece of brown leaf that has been stepped on and broken apart in dryness.  She will get herself caught on the prickly of a rose bush, though the roses themselves have long gone away for winter.  She will not, will not, pass up a dead squirrel.  I honestly don’t know who stops for a rodent flattened to the pavement. She gently breathes in and out all around what is no more, like she is honoring a fallen comrade. 

When my neighbor and her dog finally catch up to us, she will immediately go around to the backside of her fellow canine to see what good smell is coming from their butt!  In any other company, my dog would be shamed for impropriety.  But out here, the whole world is her domain, where every sight, every smell—the good, the bad, and the ugly—are all signs of life to be praised.

Later this evening, after the turkey has all been packed away in Tupperware, I will sit down to recount the days blessings, and there she will be, my dog, at my feet, running her nose up and down my pant leg.  Does she think I’ve stored a piece of pumpkin pie in my pocket for later?  No. Amazingly, mercifully, she has found her favorite smell of all.

“The earth belongs to God and all that is in it, the world, and those who live in it…and God has declared it all good,” says the Good Book.  If you don’t believe me, come take my dog for a walk.  You won’t be able to come back home without saying, Amen Amen Amen. 

This is my father-in-law and me.  
Everyone should get to meet him.  
A couple months ago, 
he moved into a nursing home.  
It's been a hard change, 
though he doesn't say that.  
He mostly says please and thank you, 
and mostly thank you.  
In the evening, when I can, 
I go visit him and I feed him his dinner.  
Few things could do more to remind me 
of the sweet miracle of life 
than to feed an old armless man 
his favorite meal of the day.  
Tonight, I also gave him a fresh shave and haircut, 
and then covered his head and face 
with his favorite smelly lotion. 
Then we sat and listened to Christmas music, 
and said nothing, 
except every now and then he would say, "That's nice."

Every day, we all need to find someone 
who can use the kind of love we can give, 
and then give it.  If we're lucky, 
it won't require more than a spoonful of meatballs.  

On my way out to my car it was raining.  
It hasn't done that in a month.  
I just stood there and said thank you. 

"The Day After"

Turns out, kindness was 
not on the ballot yesterday. 
Turns out, we were never 
casting a vote for kindness or no kindness. 

For I woke up this morning and there it was, 
right where I left it yesterday on my kitchen table—
my favorite mug, empty now, ready to be filled again. 

Kindness. 

I walked outside and it was still hanging in the morning sky, 
a silvery white crescent in the west refusing to go down, 
a soft orange glow in the east refusing not to arrive. 

Kindness. 

I turned around and there it was, bounding down the steps 
behind me on four furry legs, a ball in its mouth, 
its snout pointed upward at the soft breeze. 

Kindness. 

I walked back inside and there it was in my son's bed. 
At 13, already it is taller and lankier than me, 
but somehow it still looks like me. 

Kindness.

I am so glad you are still here, I said.
So young, yet such an old fool, it replied.
Where else would I be if not where you are?

I went back outside and pointed my feet in every direction.

At the fire station down the road the fireman cuts the grass.  
The banker counts the money.
The grocer stacks the pears.
The doctor counts heartbeats, 
while the astrologist counts stars, 
and the doorman holds the door.

But the fireman cuts the grass.  

On the wall in the kitchen it says today is my day 
to take out the trash.
I did that last week.
My brother says he must wash the pan 
so he can go outside to play.
I want to go outside to play.  

The trash plays foul.
Maybe I’ll call 911 to see if the fireman will come take it out.  
Some people will do anything if it means 
there are no flames to fight, 
no lives to save, and 
the kitchen wall can still hold up your name.  

Tonight, the grass tickled my bare ankles as I
dragged the barrels across the front lawn.
The sky, a perfect shade of black, 
had let all the stars come out to play. 

Haven’t we learned by now that
friends don’t share weapons with friends?

If someone offers you a gun
to be their friend, don’t take it.

Insist upon whatever snack their
mother packed in their lunchbox that day.

Or, if you do take their gun, break it right away,
and then don’t apologize.  Say, you’re welcome.

For no good can come
from sharing weapons.

If someone sends you a bomb in the mail with a note
that reads, “For your protection,” return it to sender.

They are not your friend.  Chances are, they are only
using you for their own protection, as their weapon of choice.

For the bomb will go off.  When it does, the tent
will go up in flames, the calcium from the bones

of the children mixing with the sulfur.  Do not trust
the person who included instructions on how to light the fuse.

They are too far away now to care about the trouble
you have made for yourself.  They never cared anyway.

Instead, make friends with those who now use their 
firing pins for tractor parts, whose address is next door

to the three sisters who make cookies for
the whole neighborhood all night long,

listening for a knock at the door—
Rachel, still seeking consolation.

When my day comes to 
slip the surly bonds
please don’t let the church 
announce it 
 
like gossip picked up
at the grocery stand.
“Did you hear?
So sad—
her son died.”

Which one? 
the lady picking out 
apples asks without regard
(everything is on sale today)

When my day comes to die
treat it like bedtime
the day before.
Shut the door to tragedy 

and all her ugly step-sisters.  
Do not suddenly remember 
my mother
you forgot until now.
 
Go to sleep 
with me
and when tomorrow comes
wonder at how long 

I can go on dreaming.

Last Wednesday, I stopped off mid-day at Cumberland Farms.  Standing at the counter waiting to check out, the woman behind the counter had her back turned to me.  She was simultaneously organizing boxes of cigarettes and Chap Stick variety packs.  When she finally turned around, she exclaimed, “Oh, I was hoping I would see you today.”

Now, you should know, I go to Cumberland Farms all the time, and to this one especially.  There’s a reason they call it a convenience store—it’s right down the street from my house, and perfect for getting gas, mints, or that gallon of emergency milk.  So, it stands to reason that I would know the people who work there, and that they would know me.  Or that we would at least be able to pick each other out of a line-up.  But I swear by the glass of milk I drank for dinner tonight, I’ve never walked in there wearing a clerical collar.  This is important, because how else can you explain what happened next?

“Do you have any ashes with you?”  I turned my head to see who was behind me, sure that she had to be talking to someone else.  But she wasn’t.  I was the only one in line.  “Who me?” I asked, doubtfully pointing at myself.  “You want to know if I have any ashes?”

Her question wasn’t without some merit.  It was, after all, Ash Wednesday.  That day when Christians have been known to smear ashes on their foreheads in remembrance of their mortality. You are dust and to dust you shall return. As if any of us, including Christians, need reminding.  It’s not just that we all know pants go on one leg at a time, or that we’re all going to kick the bucket one day like it or not, it’s that we have found every conceivable way to denigrate, demonize, traffic, starve, ignore, and straight up shoot and kill each other, stacking up body counts from Selma to Minneapolis, Nagasaki to Gaza.  In life we are mortal, dangerously so.

But also this: “Yes, do you have any ashes with you?  You’re a reverend, aren’t you?  Don’t you do holy things?”

Even now, I don’t know how the woman behind the counter knew this about me.  “Yes, I am a reverend, but I’m afraid I don’t have any ashes with me.”

She paused for a moment to consider my answer, and to put down the fifteen cartons of Virginia Slims she was holding.  “That’s okay.  We can pretend you do.”

Leaning across the counter, she tilted her head towards me.  I put down the gallon of milk I was holding.  My fingertips felt cold.  I put them to her forehead and traced the sign of a cross.  “You are dust, and to dust you shall return.”  In that moment, she let the full weight of her head fall forward into my hand, as if daring me to drop this blessing I’d been given.  “And you are beloved,” I added.  

She looked up and locked eyes with me.  “So are you.”  

There are a lot of days (most days) I move through this world just trying to keep from being found out.  No one has to know you’re a reverend.  How embarrassing.  You don’t even have ashes on Ash Wednesday.  Then, for the cost of a gallon of milk and a stop-off in town, I am called out.  

You do holy things don’t you?  No, you don’t?  We can always just pretend you do.

But we can’t pretend.  None of us can.  For we are mortal—there is no hiding from this—a mere 36 inches of countertop away from being beloved.