May Christmas find you where you are: A Blessing for the night
Dear Cloister family,
We send you our warm greetings, well wishes and blessings on this Christmas Eve.
Below you’ll find a a gift from our archives, a short story and blessing for all who long for a quiet moment to enter the so called “Silent night.” It tells the story about walking the dark streets of Bethlehem at Christmas night which I have written seven years ago for our very first 12 Days of Christmas Contemplations.
Over the last days our pilgrimage has grown to more than 200 participants from across the globe. I am sending this greeting out to our whole cloister family, so if you are not on our 12 Days list yet but wish to receive our daily contemplations as a gift starting tomorrow you can still subscribe and come along.
With an aching heart I look back at this story about Christmas in Bethlehem. The experience of a truly “silent night” would even be more heart wrenching this time around, where all festivities are canceled due to the war raging just miles away in the Gaza Strip. How dearly does this world needs a Divine birth, how dearly do we all long for a Divine spark to bring peace on earth, not only for the world but also for our aching hearts.
So here is the story and a blessing for you.
And may Christmas find you where you are, Almut with Chuck and little one
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When I was 17 I spent a year in Palestine as a volunteer. On Christmas Eve our volunteer choir first sang in Bethlehem and then at the late Christmas service at the Redeemer church in Jerusalem.
Driving back the dark roads and crossing the military checkpoint into the Westbank, my colleagues and I decided to stop once more in Bethlehem, just to see, before driving up the little hill to Beit Jala, where we lived.
Christmas night in Bethlehem!
When we reached the plaza of the Church of the Nativity it was clear we were much too late for the splendid Christmas celebrations (which are all canceled this year). Though the air was still vibrating from the day’s activities, the many visitors had long left the last church service, the media broadcasters were packing up, some last, lonely Santas made their way home, and the tourists were safely ensconced in their hotels enjoying their Christmas dinners.
So we walked back through the empty town, which had been brimming with Christmas festivities just hours ago. Now we tried to find our way home through dark narrow alleys with no windows or lights, only the closed store fronts with shuttered metal gates flanked our way. It was so silent we could hear our steps on the old ancient roads. The three of us became quieter and finally left each other to our own thoughts.
It was in this foreboding silence that "Stille Nacht, Heilige Nacht," started to sing itself in me: The German version translates like this:
Silent night, holy night,
all is sleeping;
only the holy familiy
is lonely keeping
watch through the night.
This night, this silent night in the little town of Bethlehem, was when the wonder of Christmas sank in for me. No ringing Hallelujah Choruses, no carols, no sermons, not even the homey Christmas Stube my mother created lovingly for us, year and again, can do what walking the empty, dark and locked up streets of occupied Bethlehem did to me. This silent night entered deep into my bones. It was indeed a lonely night, a dark place, where the Divine was born.
The eternal chooses the quiet of the night, when the buzz is over, to make a Divine home in an empty stable.
Our heart, your heart, is the manger. Now. In this silent night, the Divine is waiting to break in.
We must empty our heart, says Meister Eckhart, so God can write in it.
Where is your Bethlehem tonight?
Here is my Christmas blessing for you entering the night
May silence grow around you
so you can listen to the holy word
spoken in the stillness.
May darkness shield you
so you can see the star,
shining in the night.
May solitude guide you,
so you can find
the love Divine.
May the night embrace you
so you can awake
to a new dawn.
AF