Christmas Eve 2015: Reflections While Singing "Silent Night"

Tonight, I sang “Silent Night, Holy Night” to candlelight, as I have for many consecutive Christmas Eves. I sat with the choir at my church, turned on the plastic battery-operated candle when the time was right to do so, and sang those timeless words of the virgin and child, the infant so mild.

And yet, as I sang these very familiar words, I noticed myself experiencing them in a different way than usual. The words resonated a little bit more, and the sentimental tears that normally well up underneath my eyelids went further than sentimentality. The depth of the hymn's words caught my full attention, and my entire body and being were full of a message of “yes” as I listened and heard myself sing them.

“Son of God, love’s pure light; radiant beams from thy holy face, with the dawn of redeeming grace…”

“Silent night, holy night, wondrous star, lend thy light…  With the angels, let us sing hallelujah to our king. Christ the Savior is born.”

As I sang the words, I thought of our world… our world crying out for love and justice and peace in ways that is has both never before and has since the beginning of time. I thought of people away from their families tonight, or grieving the loss of someone important to them. I thought of people working, in hospitals or gas stations or retail stores. I thought of refugees and victims of violence and its aftermath in Syria, in Paris, in Beirut, in Israel/Palestine, in the United States.

I thought of mothers grieving children killed by guns this year. I thought of Sandra Bland’s family, and Freddie Gray’s family, and the countless other Black and Brown people who were systematically erased by society that does value their lives. I thought of people brutalized for their gender expressions and identities or sexual orientations. I thought of those who go without food, or shelter, or health care, or a sense of self worth and love and acceptance.

And I was also filled with the assurance that God or Love or whatever name we give a force of Peace or Truth with which we each identify—this Divine Light does come to us, again and again and again, in the midst of our messy and tattered and beautiful lives.

Holy and radiant and loving God, with us in our suffering, move in and through us. Be born in us. Help us to birth with you a world of peace and justice for all people, just as you have ordained it to be.

Amen.

Merry Christmas,

Eva