Christmas Eve Musings, December 24, 2013. From Lake Bunyoni, Uganda

Christmas Eve Day, December 24

In the US, Christmas music plays. In shopping malls and grocery stores popular “holiday music” tempts patrons to continue their spending. The BBC and public radio stations broadcast the Service of Nine Lessons and Carols from Kings College. If I were at my home in Ohio, I would be tearing up at the last two  stanzas of Once inRoyal David’s City, singing the familiar alto part to Adam Lay  Ybounden, and soaking in the familiar scriptures and relishing the carols familiar and not.

But here at Lake Bunyoni, the music is the birds. The birds sing for Christmas.

Once in Royal David's City, vs. 5 and 6:

And our eyes at last shall see him,

Through his own redeeming love,

For that child so dear and gentle

Is our Lord in heaven above;

And he leads his children on

To the place where he is gone.

Not in that poor lowly stable,

With the oxen standing by,

We shall see him; but in heaven,

Set at Gods right hand on high;

When like stars his children drowned

All in white shall wait around.

Christmas Eve

Sitting here on the dock. Wooden, dug-out canoes rest and bob against each other, slender bodies at rest. A bird whistles above—a trilling and whirring song. Another bird calls a high come here. In the rushes, there is a chuck-a-chuck-a, like a bow dancing on the violin strings. A drum beats in the distance. Christmas adagios.

As I listen, I think that perhaps the sounds of that first Christmas Eve were not too different. There would have been sheep bleating and the soft rustle of hay as cows, and oxen, and donkeys settled for the night. Nature’s adagios.

"Thanks be to God."

The congregation responds to each of the nine scripture readings during the Service of Nine Lessons and Carols with, “Thanks be to God.” It’s the familiar refrain following scripture readings at other Anglican and Episcopal services.  This year, as I listened to a recording of Lessons and Carols, the words “Thanks be to God” startled me at the end of the sixth lesson. That lesson, Luke 2:1-7, tells of Jesus’ birth. It ends with the line, “…for there was no room for them in the inn.”

Reader: “…for there was no room for them in the inn.”

Congregation: “Thanks be to God.”

How startling. We give thanks that there was no room in the inn. We give thanks that God came to us in a stable. Yes. That is something for which to give thanks.

Had Jesus been born in the inn, the weary shepherds would have been barred from the event. It’s doubtful an innkeeper would allow a band of sweaty, smelly shepherds to crowd the hallway. No animals would have snuffled and cooed, and breathed the air where the young family sheltered. God came to us in humble dwellings, “in that poor and lowly stable.” God with us in our sweat and dirt and smells. God with us on and in the earth. 

Thanks be to God.

Saturday Afternoon at Bethel House

Two days of rain finally came to an end this afternoon. The sun is shining. The solar lamps stand sentinel-like and recharge. The dishes dry in the sun. 

Across the street at the 7^th Day Adventist Church, a men’s quartet practices songs from my childhood—songs that my father, Lyle Chase, and their tenor and baritone partners offered during Sunday evening worship. Sometimes Dad and Mom sang in SATB quartets as Sunday evening “special music.” Funny how this place, Beni, calls up memories of the small manufacturing town and railroad stop where I grew up, Corry, PA.

But this day. From my perch at my desk, I look directly at the wall surrounding our compound. Just above stands the top of Renaly’s Alimention, “La Devouverte” (Renaly’s Grocery Story: The Discovery). Renaly’s is a sort of Beni strip mall. It's a long, low building with several “storefronts.” A bar, a shop that sells food items and sundries, a coiffure, and a pharmacie operate on the premises. Renaly’s Alimentation livens our evenings with a repetitive playlist at volumes that meriting a call to local authorities for “disrupting the peace” in the US.

The gospel quartet has disbursed. The street now plays its music. Motos rumble past as the bass and percussion. A radio at the alimentation sings a tenor line. Women call out greetings and a group of children plays behind us. A baby cries a sad melody against the harmonies. A songbird chips an occasional ornamentation, a grace note frequently lost in the din. Sometimes the delicate note calls out of a slice of quiet before the downbeat.

I have to think in these terms and find beauty in the din. Otherwise the sounds crash against each other and scream insults. I want quiet. I want only the songbird’s singular and gentle grace notes. I want the motos and the radio and the honking to cease. 

I want. I want. I want.

 

If I were in the US right now I would be railing against the onslaught of holiday advertisements, cheap music, and the siren call to buy more than I can afford or anyone needs.

So, I have a choice. Wish. Want. Stew in “If only” and “Why don’t they…?” Or accept what is and change what I can. “God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change what I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.”

Oh….and enjoy the sun!

The Armor of Light

Almighty God, give us grace to cast away the works of darkness, and put on the armor of light, now in the time of this mortal life in which your Son Jesus Christ came to visit us in great humility; that in the last day, when he shall come again in his glorious majesty to judge both the living and the dead, we may rise to the life immortal; through him who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.

One of my favorite prayers. The Collect for the First Sunday of Advent.

Sometimes "the works of darkness" are an avaricious ogre, dripping with chaos and slinging terror. Sometimes they personify as a rapist, a corrupt official, an abuser of power, a murderer, a thief. But most days, at least for me, the works of darkness slip in between the cracks of my own humanness. They show up, as they did this week, as small irritants, a meltdown over difficulty learning Swahili, frustration with too many tasks for the available time, self-doubt, judgmental thoughts, pride, a sprinkling of anger, and a dash of gossip. Yup. The works of darkness. Not pretty. Not anything of which I’m proud.

But, thanks be to God, the gift of grace gives us strength to “put on the armor of light," and we feel its weight (or its lightness?). Once I choose to put on the armor of light, I can’t help but experience the immediate and mundane differently. When I put on the armor of light, I assume a new posture in the world. My head lifts and my eyes waken to beauty large and small. My ears hear laughter and song. My hands open to blessings, and my heart opens to joy.

If I put on the armor of light and look back on the week, I relish the simple pleasure of cooking squash on Thursday and the resonant tenor voice behind me in church this morning that caressed then lifted up words of praise. I am reminded of a wooden ceiling bathed in sunlight, like the hull of a great ark, and the treasure of a massive floor of hand-laid stones that will soon be secreted away with a layer of cement. Draped in the armor of light, I smile at the raucous incongruity of wedding party photos while a hen pecks her way in an among the guests, and the trio of turkeys who waggle their way into meeting space where the UCBC faculty is gathered.

Yes, give me grace to cast away the works of darkness that creep into my thoughts each day--the small but pernicious doubts, jealousies, and judgments. Give me grace to put on the armor of light, stand in humility and give thanks.