Dear fellow Christmas pilgrim,

The innkeeper in Bethlehem has gotten bad press for many centuries, even though he barely makes a cameo appearance in the story. But, was he really the embodiment of uncaring rejection we make him out to be? Really a Charles Dickens scripted evil antagonist? Even as a child, I felt sorry for the innkeeper. Surely he had many pressures on him. Nobody sent him an angel to ask his permission or tell him what to do.

Apparently my kindergarten teacher did not have access to the more recent scholarship that helps to explain what happened that night. It in fact helps us see an extraordinary moment of hospitality in place of what had been thought to be miserliness.

Textual scholars tell us that the word so often translated into English as “inn” is quite misleading. There were inns in Palestine at the time. The good Samaritan used one to house the wounded traveler he helped. These inns were ranged along highways (like we have Motel 6 at every interstate exit). But the word Matthew uses is “kataluma,” the same word that is translated as the “upper room” that the disciples arrange at Jesus’ direction. The word refers to a shared sleeping and eating room in a modest house. Such houses also usually had stables for the animals as a part of the structure (like ones you can find in the foothills of the Alps in Bavaria today).

So what likely happened is that Joseph arranged ahead of time for them to stay with extended family relatives. Mediterranean culture then and now is quite family oriented, and one could expect even quite remote family to be willing to put you up for an extended stay. Since the little town was quite crowded for the census, the shared sleeping room (kataluma) that would house guests along with family members was already full. Joseph’s (or Mary’s) relatives then likely put the family up in overflow space in the house, overlapping with the stable. There was no room but they were given hospitality. They shared the same meals and conversations with the hosts and other guests. And when it came time for Mary to give birth, the family rallied to provide what was needed, and improvised a baby bed.

This is a much more rich and fulsome birth story. And one with comforting parallels to the struggle of households today trying to host extended families and their burdens and quarrels during a crowded season. Today we invite you into this revised, re-imagined, nativity scene. The practice we outline below is borrowed from the Jesuit exercises in imaginative prayer or meditation.

Practice

A Jesuit Imaginative Practice. Nativity in a crowded family home.

Today we ask you to find a quiet place, perhaps with a candle an cup of tea, and meditate on this re-imagined Christmas story by putting yourself into the scene.

• Take the role of the “innkeeper,” who in this telling is the patriarch or matriarch of the family, deciding who and how to welcome, and how to hold things together. Or if this seems hard, choose some other character, express or implied in the story.

  Allow me to set the stage. For the time of the census, Joseph & Mary have asked hospitality in your house. This would involve space to sleep, shared meals, and help with local connections. They likely have not told you that angels have appeared to them heralding the child as the son of God. The household must welcome them and accommodate them for an extended stay.

  But everyone in the house knew when Mary arrived that she was far along in her pregnancy and that she may need to give birth at your house. While they are staying with you it becomes clear that Mary is going into labor. Now there is a rush of activity for the birth. People and things are moved, preparations are made. After the birth, perhaps weeks after, the shepherds arrive.

  You can choose a particular time in the story: the arrival of Joseph and the very pregnant Mary, the rush at the beginning of labor, the relief when the child is finally laid in the feed trough that separates the living quarters from the stable, or the unexpected arrival days later of the shepherds.

• As you imagine yourself as a character in one of these scenes, use all your senses to vividly imagine the scene and the action. See the people walking, sharing, doing chores, feeding animals, cooking, praying. See your interactions with your partner and the concern or joy on his face. See the faces and expressions of others, the clothes they wear, the dust on their feet. Look into their eyes. Hear the conversations they share, or the noise of crowds or animals. Smell the food and the animals and the people in close quarters. Feel the heat or cold on your hands, the wet cloths, or the grasp of someone else.

• Most important in this form of meditation is to focus on the feelings that arise as you imagine the scene and action within it. How does it feel to welcome them at the door? Is there joy, sorry, worry, self-absorption, compassion in your heart as you imagine making decisions or taking action? How does it feel to create inadequate space where before you thought you had none at all. What is your reaction to the shepherds who come to your house to kneel before someone else’s baby?

• Dwell then with this story and with the feelings. Make some notes about the feelings and what they led you to experience. Then turn to how they might help to explain the kind of person you are now, or would like to be? Carefully discern their meaning, why you might have had them, and where these feeling might lead you today, in your life.

• Finally, consider how do these imaginative experiences might help you with issues you have today. Who is the innkeeper in you? What are your motivations, and toward whom? How might you want to change who you are and how you feel? What can your reaction tell you about yourself and your relation to God?

And, at the end, as you finish your tea or glass of wine and look at the candle you have lit, say a prayer of thanksgiving for this scene you have experienced and for the words and lessons you have learned. Perhaps you might later re-read the poem by Rumi “The Guest House” and ask what strangers have knocked on your heart’s door as you imagined your revised nativity.

And now, smile, because we hope that Christmas has found you where you are…

Chuck and Almut with little one