Holy Night

A thrill of hope, the weary world rejoices
For yonder breaks a new and glorious morn.

O, Christ Child, how can we ever hope to understand? Your birth brings a thrill of hope, though it is not a feeling we could explain. We are too old, the world is too tired for hope, and yet you come and it is as joy to us. We hardly know why. A baby cannot save us from the agonies of living. The weakness of a baby is not the mighty to save that we pinned our hopes on. Didn’t your birth look like a failure, even for those with eyes to see? God has chosen the weak things of the world to shame the strong. Well, I used to think I was.

Truly, he taught us to love one another
His law is love and his gospel is peace…
And in his name all oppression shall cease

If only I could understand, perhaps I could have peace. Not that that’s what I’ve ever asked for, that measure of gentility and self-restraint. Submission is an ugly word in my mouth. I’ve always wondered if to you peace means silence, as it does to me. I’ve wondered if you could love the wild ones, the ones who thrash under the weight of your hand, the ones who claw at the restraints of mortality so desperately, aching to touch you, but only on their own terms, only insofar as such an encounter does not entail humility or, its synonym, humiliation. Yet here is a mystery that we cannot lash out at, because He has a very fragile soft spot on the back of his head. He is all fragility, really, nearly transparent skin, soft, still forming bones. Christ, did you choose this form of vulnerability so that the wild ones like me would not grow frightened, cut and run, like so many startled horses? If you came to proclaim the peace of God, you did it not as a conqueror proclaiming servility to a trampled people. You came as one we could not fear or fight, and therefore you have won us all.

Fall on your knees!
O hear the angel voices!
O night divine!

O yes, fall down on your knees before this great mystery! Two thousand years later, we are wondering still. We come to find our Lord in a cradle, the apparently bastard son of two peasant parents. I said we could not be afraid of you, and yet I tremble to approach. Because, wee God-baby, I know what’s coming. I know what you will say and do, and what will someday far away be demanded of me. How what you will ask is what I feel I could never give, not even to the baby, because I know within him is the wild man from Galilee who brings earthquakes, eruptions, and tremors to my otherwise quiet life.

Trust.
You want my trust.

But here at the cradle I grow forgetful of all else, remembering that the only true understanding I ever had was that I do not understand, that I am not wise or good, that it is utter impertinence for me to even speak of this mystery with my unclean lips and my dirty heart.

But here I am. And here you are.

And for this moment in time I find myself able to fall on my knees before you and still the wildness in my heart. Not knowing what tomorrow will bring, I surrender, at least for tonight. And so we call this night “divine.”