God of the Sparrow 🌱 By Kathy Manis Findley
"Do not be afraid. You are worth more than many sparrows." Jesus
When we say, “It is Christmas,” we mean that God has spoken into the world his last, his deepest, his most beautiful word in the incarnate Word. And this word means: I love you, you, the world and human beings.
— Karl Rahner
I ran across this painting by Eric Dowdle as I was nursing a bit of holiday doldrums. It’s easy to fall into doldrums while anticipating Christmas. We expect an ”all is calm, all is bright” kind of Christmas, but sometimes that’s not reality at all. Instead, we can’t hear the singing of choirs, the sweet sounds of the organ or the ringing of Christmas bells.
When I look at this art, I see everything we long for as Christmas nears: a bright and beautiful tree with a sparking star on top, Santas everywhere and the people encircling the tree as if to say, ”Right here among us, there is peace on earth among people of good will.” If the painting miraculously had sound, I imagine I would hear the ringing of church bells heralding the magnificent coming of peace on earth.
Yet, we have reality in our sight instead of this joyful painting. Peace among us in these days, even peace within us, seems to be in short supply as division, war, poverty, and racial injustice continues to hold sway on our world. Not insignificant is that our personal relationships seem to be less than peaceful. The place within us where peace ought to be is often in chaos, filled with anxiety or just plain empty. Peace in our hearts and spirits—that sacred sense of serenity and inner calm—simply eludes us.
When my spirit is not at peace, I can barely see peace anywhere, even at Christmas. Such was the story of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow who wrote the words of the beloved carol, ”I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day.” Some of the stanzas of Longfellow’s beautiful poem are familiar to us, but other stanzas we have seldom, if ever, heard. Here is the poem in its entirety.
I heard the bells on Christmas Day
Their old, familiar carols play,
And wild and sweet
The words repeat
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!
And thought how, as the day had come,
The belfries of all Christendom
Had rolled along
The unbroken song
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!
Till ringing, singing on its way,
The world revolved from night to day,
A voice, a chime,
A chant sublime
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!
Then from each black, accursed mouth
The cannon thundered in the South,
And with the sound
The carols drowned
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!
It was as if an earthquake rent
The hearth-stones of a continent,
And made forlorn
The households born
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!
And in despair I bowed my head;
"There is no peace on earth," I said;
"For hate is strong,
And mocks the song
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!"
Then pealed the bells more loud and deep:
"God is not dead, nor doth He sleep;
The Wrong shall fail,
The Right prevail,
With peace on earth, good will to all!
I cannot help but look around at what I see and hear on the streets of this city and all over the world and see despair, hatred, division and violence taking over the peace I so need. So as the carol says, ”And in despair I bowed my head; “There is no peace on earth,” I said;” For hate is strong, And mocks the song of peace on earth, good-will to men!”
As you seek peace this Christmas season, know that God is the giver of a deep peace that abides in our hearts. I invite you to take a few moments out of your day to enjoy these videos. The first is a choral and orchestra performance of the carol. The second is a lovely group of young people singing the hymn with the addition of handbells. The third is a beautiful performance by the Mormon Tabernacle Choir with the narrated story of Longfellow’s writing of the carol.
May the Christmas blessing of peace fill your heart, and may you hear, above all other sounds, the wild and sweet ringing of the bells of Christmas.
Christmas Day
December 25, 2019
LATER
Later
after the angels,
after the stable,
after the Child,
they went back …
as we always must,
back to the world that doesn’t understand
our talk of angels and stars
and especially not the Child.
We go back complaining that it doesn’t last.
They went back singing praises to God!
We do have to go back,
but we can still sing the alleluias!
— Ann Weems
Christmas Day — it will pass too soon, out of sight for another year. The angels topping our trees will be packed away. The stars on our garlands will be neatly rolled up and packed into a box. The tinsel gone! The ornaments gone! The lights unplugged! The candles extinguished! Until another year.
And we all go back to a “world that doesn’t understand our talk of angels and stars and especially not the Child.” The world goes back to life as usual, no longer graced with the brilliance of Christmas. The wars rage on across the globe, swords replacing plowshares. The racism again begins to reign. The political parties spew hatred one to the other. Hunger remains and poverty still devastates. The border wall continues to send its message of exclusion.
It’s all the same, just as it was before. It seems that the gentle spirit of Christmas changed our spirits for only a brief moment. We slip back again into our normal lives, perhaps forgetting the silent night when the star shone over a Child. As the poem says so poignantly, Christmas doesn’t last. We do have to go back to a life that can be oppressively normal, a world that can be oppressively cruel.
But there is Good News! Because God Incarnate came to us, there is Gospel Good News! Even though we have to go back, “we can still sing the alleluias!” We can sing year around if we want to. We can sing alleluias in good times and bad, in times of joy and in times of sorrow.
We can sing alleluias, like the angels who still sing in the heavens. 
We can sing alleluias because “The Word became flesh and dwelt among us.”
Thanks be to God. Amen.
The Nineteenth Day of Advent
December 19, 2019
For those with ears to hear the holy and eyes to see the sacred moment of the coming of the Christ Child, Christmas comes again and again each Advent season. Yet, Christmas also comes for us in the eyes of a child, in the words of a friend, in the music of hymns and carols tucked into our hearts, in the kind spirit of a stranger. If we take time to see! If we take a moment to hear! If we spend a few moments engaging with another person! Then we experience the holy moments of Christmas. Ann Weems writes of the ways Christmas comes.
CHRISTMAS COMES
Christmas comes every time we see God in other persons.
The human and the holy meet in Bethlehem
or in Times Square,
for Christmas comes like a golden storm on its way
to Jerusalem —
determinedly, inevitably . . .
Even now it comes
in the face of hatred and warring —
no atrocity too terrible to stop it,
no Herod strong enough,
no hurt deep enough,
no curse shocking enough,
no disaster shattering enough.
For someone on earth will see the star,
someone will hear the angel voices,
someone will run to Bethlehem,
someone will know peace and goodwill:
the Christ will be born!
— Ann Weems
There is little doubt that our world is filled with “hatred and warring.” There are hurts, atrocities and disasters. We see it on our televisions, every nightly news program describing it in full detail. We are now seeing the rancor of our Congress, one party hopelessly divided from the other, in the impeachment of a president. We mourn the losses of war, natural disasters, wildfires, gun violence and all the harms caused between people.
Yet, someone on earth will indeed see the star. Some of us might just hear angel voices because we live on holy ground. Some of us might repair the world. We might just find that we are anointed by God’s Spirit to bring good news to the poor; to heal the brokenhearted, to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free! (Paraphrased from Luke 4:18 NRSV) Advent may inspire us to live into our anointing and to embrace the high calling of repairing our world in whatever ways we can. Advent might call us to heal, to free, to proclaim release, to offer good news to the poor and to cause the blind to see.
But Advent will also lead us by the light of Bethlehem’s star, guiding us again to Bethlehem. Advent opens our hearts to know peace and goodwill afresh and anew. Christ will be born in us again. Christmas will come — into our lives, into our hearts, lifting our spirits. Ah yes, Christmas will come!
And throughout this Advent, we will again be reminded of what we proclaim from our hearts of faith:
Emmanuel, God with us!
Amen.
What a holiday whirlwind! I survived it, but I did go through the predictable path of cooking and baking, wrapping packages and decorating, entertaining family and friends, and leaving a heavy dusting of glitter behind . . . all through the house!
I managed to work in the slightest bit of contemplation, reflection and drawing nearer to the God-child in the stable. I managed to reflect on the young girl who would give birth to the Messiah, to think about her emotions throughout her most miraculous ordeal. I thought of her joy, her surprise, her confusion, her sense of wonder, her fear — emotions that began after an angel appeared to her.
I contemplated the angels all around — Mary’s angel and Joseph’s, Zachariah‘s angel, the angels that comforted the shepherds. I wondered how the angel visits must have seemed, especially to Joseph who communed with an angel multiple times.
Most of all, though, I related to the mother Mary, and the things she discovered along the way about being a mother to this particular child. It’s appropriate, I think, to reflect on the mother’s emotions, to compare them with my own mother emotions.
To miss my son who lives hundreds of miles away.
To long to see my grandchildren opening their Christmas gifts.
To think about all the joy, and all the pain, of being a mother.
And from that contemplative activity, to learn and grow, to gain a fresh understanding about mothering, and to learn what mothering has to do with faith.
When all is said and done — with Christmas wrappings in the trash and glitter all vacuumed up — I recall the wise words of Meister Eckhart about mothering:
“We are all meant to be mothers of God for God is always needing to be born.”
“Dozens of institutions across the country
received email threats Thursday afternoon,
prompting evacuations and sweeps of buildings.” (CNN)
This troubling news juxtaposed with the words of the music playing as I work.
“Peace on earth, good will to all people . . .”
“The glories of His righteousness and wonders of his love . . .”
“All is calm, all is bright . . .”
It is a contrast for us. The songs of peace, hope and joy sung during this season are in conflict with the acts of violence and hatred we see in the world. And thus we are conflicted. As people of faith, we search for our place in being agents of change. We believe that our faith calls us to scatter love wherever there is hate. But we don’t know how.
We are powerless and paralyzed, and the songs of the season just make it more pronounced. I remember singing the compelling words of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s poem that eventually became a carol:
“And in despair, I bowed my head. ‘There is no peace on earth,” I said. ‘For hate is strong and mocks the song of peace on earth goodwill to men.’”
For now, peace on earth is elusive. The email and bomb threats have been sent to places throughout the country: Pennsylvania, Seattle, Chicago, San Francisco, Utah. Threats were also emailed to locations in New York City and Atlanta; the Charlotte News & Observer and the Raleigh News & Observer newspapers in North Carolina; and to three sites in Miami.
Over these terrible signs of hate, we have no control. But we do have control over what we will allow into our hearts. To be sure, we should be informed by the events in the world. We should be persistent in raising our voices in the face of hate, denouncing it, and praying for its end. But we must not choose to dwell completely on the violence all around us. We can give our souls a break from the harsh reality bynfinding ways to meditate on the peace and love of God. Even when hate triumphs, we have full access to the Prince of Peace who will visit us and dwell in our hearts.
Still . . . “Hate is strong and mocks the song of peace on earth . . . “
These words are as true today as on the day they were penned on Christmas Day, 1863. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow wrote the poem, “Christmas Bells” during a time of personal despair and in deep concern over the American Civil War. The poem was set to music in 1872, and Longfellow’s references to the Civil War are prevalent in some of the verses that are not commonly sung. This is the entire text of Longfellow’s poem:
I heard the bells on Christmas Day
Their old, familiar carols play,
and wild and sweet
The words repeat
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!
And thought how, as the day had come,
The belfries of all Christendom
Had rolled along
The unbroken song
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!
Till ringing, singing on its way,
The world revolved from night to day,
A voice, a chime,
A chant sublime
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!
Then from each black, accursed mouth
The cannon thundered in the South,
And with the sound
The carols drowned
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!
It was as if an earthquake rent
The hearth-stones of a continent,
And made forlorn
The households born
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!
And in despair I bowed my head;
“There is no peace on earth,” I said;
“For hate is strong,
And mocks the song
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!”
Then pealed the bells more loud and deep:
“God is not dead, nor doth He sleep;
The Wrong shall fail,
The Right prevail,
With peace on earth, good-will to men.
What the poet concluded is truth: “to God is not dead nor doth He sleep. The wrong shall fail, the right prevail . . .”
May God make it so.
This season is a tender time. And oh, this darkness of mine. December brings it every year — that feeling of tenderness, of darkness. That is, if I stop to notice. Stop decorating the house. Stop shopping. Stop planning a lavish Christmas dinner. Stop baking dozens of cookies. Stop going to Christmas events — parties, pageants, gatherings, light displays . . . Just stop!
If we do stop in these advent days, we might just feel this tender time. It’s not Christmas yet, you know. It’s Advent, a time of waiting, hoping, believing. If ever there was a time to practice mindfulness, this is the season. As I move through Advent’s days, I want to move slowly and with the awareness of the tiny miracles all around me.
I want to remember past years and people I have loved. I want to linger beside the Chrismon tree that holds decades of white and gold ornaments and decades of memories. I want to be mindful of my own darkness and the tenderness that is nested in my heart.
Advent is most surely a tender time, and a time of darkness, a time when people of faith wait for the light to come to earth again. Advent causes me to wait for the light that always comes to come into my heart again. Until the light shines, though, through a little baby born in Bethlehem, days will be dark and tender.
I am remembering my youngest brother who would have had a birthday this month. The loss of him far too soon will always leave a lump in my throat. December, his birth month, is a tender time.
In these days, I miss the joy and laughter of my grandchildren. For them Christmas is all joy. They are such a gift to me, and being separated from them by so many miles makes this a tender time.
My friend’s fourteen-year-old grandson lost his battle with cancer this week, and I cannot help thinking about what a dark and tender time this family is feeling because of this deep loss.
So many losses surround us. So much grieving. So much darkness waiting for the light of Bethlehem’s star and the infant that comes to bring light to our hearts.
I love this tiny prayer:
Lord, you have always lightened this darkness of mine;
and though night is here, today I believe.
— Evening Office by Northumbria Community
We rarely sing one of my favorite Christmas Carols. Its words always cause emotions to well up within me. Although the words of this carol were written in the mid-1800’s, they still speak to the bleakness we face in these days.
It was on Christmas day in 1863, when Henry Wadsworth Longfellow — a 57-year-old widowed father of six children, the oldest of which had been nearly paralyzed as his country fought a war against itself — wrote a poem seeking to capture the dissonance in his own heart and in the world he observed around him. He heard the Church bells that December day. He heard the singing of “peace on earth,“ but he also despaired of a world of injustice and violence that seemed to mock the truthfulness of any sort of peace. Yet Longfellow’s words eventually led to a sense of confident hope even in the midst of bleak despair.
Such confident hope will also guide us through our own reality — a reality that constantly reminds us that the presence of despair, violence, injustice and intolerance destroys the hope, peace, justice and lovingkindness we so deeply desire for our world.
I heard the bells on Christmas Day
Their old, familiar carols play,
and wild and sweet
The words repeat
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!
And thought how, as the day had come,
The belfries of all Christendom
Had rolled along
The unbroken song
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!
Till ringing, singing on its way,
The world revolved from night to day,
A voice, a chime,
A chant sublime
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!
Then from each black, accursed mouth
The cannon thundered in the South,
And with the sound
The carols drowned
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!
It was as if an earthquake rent
The hearth-stones of a continent,
And made forlorn
The households born
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!
And in despair I bowed my head;
“There is no peace on earth,” I said;
“For hate is strong,
And mocks the song
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!”
Then pealed the bells more loud and deep:
“God is not dead, nor doth He sleep;
The Wrong shall fail,
The Right prevail,
With peace on earth, good-will to men.”
“Then pealed the bells more loud and deep, ‘God is not dead, nor doth He sleep.””
Amen
God of the Sparrow 🌱 By Kathy Manis Findley 