Boatyard christmas eve
Most the crew was already gone for Christmas break. Only Paul and I came in - and only for half a day - to secure the boatyard for a looming winter storm. And being one of the last days of the year, the day had some unfinished work for us. A fire in the old building that housed the mechanic and rig shops had ruined the space and rendered most its contents unredeemable. For weeks we made half-decisions about what to save: old tools, solvents, coils of rope, half-cans of paint, engine manuals... But eventually, we could not dither anymore. All that remained would be loaded onto pallets for a truck to haul away forever. The old shed would be razed for something new and better.
He drove the forklift, and I loaded pallets. My cold hands and back ached as I rushed to keep pace. With a cigarette in his lips, he encouraged me in his downeast accent: “You’re an animal!” His compliment was a gift I’d carry home that Christmas Eve.
A year before I had been a priest in a pulpit of a beautiful church. But now I was loading trash in a boatyard. Up the hill in a dark corner of my garage was bag full of the symbols of my broken faith in an all-too-human institution: liturgical vestments, stoles, clergy collars, even a special Bible given to me by my congregation. The bag itself was a reminder of how much was broken. It needed to be sequestered. But something else kept me from throwing it all away. I could not see the reasons at the time. Whatever the reasons I could not understand, I was far from joyful on that Christmas Eve, even though Paul's compliment about being an animal made me smile.
As I loaded the trash, I listened to the radio through the open windows of my van. The music stopped at the change of the hour with a quick summary of bad news from around the world. Then after a pause of silence, a lone voice filled the air with a simple melody. It was clearly a child. “Once in Royal David’s City, stood lowly cattle shed, where a mother laid her baby, with a manger for his bed….” From the nave of a candle-lit chapel across the ocean floated verses from the old story.
By time Paul came back, a virtual a choir of angels had taken over the wharf. He dropped the forks to the ground and didn’t say a word as we listened to the next hymn about a holy night long ago. Long lay the world in sin and error, pining....till he appeared and the soul felt its worth....
That was years ago. I did not go to church that Christmas Eve for the first time since I was a boy. We stayed home, but I did go into the garage that night and pulled the Bible out of the bag. At dinner with my wife and sons, I parted the pages to the place toward the end: "In those days, there were shepherds in the fields, watching over their flocks by night..., when Lo!...
Everyone knows the story even if they have a hard time believing it, or don't want to.
The shepherds were scared. The angels told them not to be. The good news coming into the world was more than they could understand. Of course they had their doubts. Who wouldn't? But they went anyway. And there they saw the baby wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in a manger, just as the angels said.
I am happy to say that between that Christmas Eve and this one, I threw away the bag in the garage. But I kept what was inside. The symbols remind me, and others, of the loving purposes of God, and my place (and theirs) in the true light where the soul feels its worth. We don't have to understand it all. In fact, we can't understand it all. Any loving Creator of the world would have to be sorely disappointed by what we have made of it. But in this story, God is not letting us go.
It’s as if God said: “I will not let you believe, even for a minute, that you will find fulfillment in perfect safety and comfort. No. That is not what ships are built for and not why I made you. It is here. NOW. It is in this salty, oily, dirty place where I come to dwell - with you. HERE.” Thus does Emmanuel -God with us - arrive.
If it could be true for the shepherds, and Mary, and Joseph - and even the animals - it could be true for a disillusioned minister in a burned-out boatyard on a stormy Christmas Eve in a world breaking with human sin and error.
The story of Christ is just a just another story. I believe with all my heart and soul and mind that it's the best one. That I believe it’s true makes it even better. It may be hard to believe, but I know also it’s not as hard as trying to live without it. I've tried. Thank God, I failed.
I will be in church tonight with my grown men boys and their mother, my wife. And as with every other imperfect, broken, messed up, sometimes discouraged, try-to-be follower of Christ, I'll sing with my boys, and with the choir, and with the angels, remembering that the greatest gift I’ve ever gotten is to be part of this story, to be a keeper of this story. We keep it in our hearts where its truth reveals itself in our lives, even in the dark times and lowly places where we can't see its light.
Merry Christmas.
