It’s Christmas Eve at the house on Humphrey Avenue; and the 50 degree weather we were feeling overnight has given way to an artic blast and clearing skies that will plunge the temperature well below freezing. Jocelyn and Julia are out getting some last-minute items, including some hot chocolate bombs that we’ll have sometime tonight.

The view from my window is significantly different from years past. Even a few years ago, I would regale you with the views of the south fields of the farm and the woods just beyond where the deer would come out to forage for the soybeans that the Gordons’ combine might have missed. At present, I’m watching a well-prepared-for-winter squirrel tentatively jump from branch to branch in the neighbor’s back yard. 

By now, we would be unpacking the car at the farm or with the cousins in Dayton or at my sister’s in Washington D.C.  Now I can’t use the excuse of preparation and travel for the tardiness of this post (though I’m sure I’ll think of something to replace it).

It’s a season of change that has lasted a few years now, leaving the farm behind and finding new Christmas rhythms closer to home – a shift inward toward the tribe nearby while still including our family and friends we long to be near. It is indeed different, but solace and satisfaction can be found nonetheless. 

For the first time in our marriage (in fact, since I moved here in 1995), we will wake up at home on Christmas morning.

Instead of visits to the nearby farmsteads on Willow Road (and boy, am I missing Jim Laramie’s homemade toffee), we’re dropping off packages of Jocelyn’s baking goodness to neighbors a chip shot from our house.

It isn’t as if we’re averse to jumping in the car, though. We took a special trip to get a gift to a favorite couple last night. As we stood at their door, exchanging our affections from a distance, I was reminded that whether it was the hour we were spending in transit, a full day’s drive or a walk next door – human connection is the most important thing in the world.

With that conviction, friends, I have to admit I’m perplexed and a little scared for all of us.

The pandemic has revealed in new ways our essential and unbreakable connectedness (and even responsibility) to one another – even as wisdom compels us to be strategically apart.

And yet, I haven’t had a lot conversations about many of the year’s big news events (e.g. race relations, COVID, vaccinations, the election) without it drifting into a conversation about politics and power – and suddenly I feel like I’m walking into a buzzsaw and risk losing friends over it. The debates that they turn into literally feel like an argument over which day of the week it is and a toxic cycle of attack and withdrawal gets set up that I can only imagine is grievous to the spirit of this season.

And I’m not letting myself off the hook here. I feel it in myself as keenly as I see it in others.

In my confusion and frustration, I was reminded by a friend’s Facebook post of one of my favorite verses of ancient Good News:

The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.

– Gospel of John 1:14

It caught me by surprise – I was so gripped by indignation and wanting to be right and “drop the mic” (by the way, check out Seth Godin’s thoughts on that).

But those ageless words struck me and slowed me down into a space of deep conviction and productive thought. And here is the question I ask myself on Christmas Eve as I again ponder that marvelous reality:

If Perfect Love enfleshed itself, stepping down from exalted position to pitch a tent among those as wretched as we, is it possible that we could lay aside our ideologies and firebrand rhetoric and listen to each other again?

What if we agreed to talk less – especially in the venom producing media we (I) obsessively scroll through – and listen more?

If we did it well, it would start with silence.

And that would be a great thing.

As the promise of Love’s reaching for us took hold of me, I realize that creation itself is quietly calling me (and maybe all of us) into a holy quiet…

…leaders calling us into a season of staying home and limiting our interactions with the ones we love…

…the absence of birdsong in the thin light of the low sun…

…the growing darkness of the Winter Solstice enveloping us. I can literally feel the pace of people’s footfalls on the street slow when winter darkness comes.

After a divisive, contentious, excruciating, disappointing, frustrating, scary year, what if a little silence is just the thing to which a loving God is calling us?

It was into the silence and ignobility of a subsistence farmer’s barn and the trembling hands of a teenage girl where Love disembarked from Heaven. Over the endless fights for political power between fever pitched factions that were far more bent toward the club and knife than we’ve ever seen, Love came to affirm that our connectedness is real. And despite our disagreements, a real connection with God and each other is what’s most important.

And it all came in the silence of the wondrous night… when it is darkest.

We can hear God in the silence – and perhaps be changed.

And maybe we’ll find, sitting with a vulnerable heart in the silent, humble tension between pro/anti, red/blue or any other argument, is Jesus.

And He is lovingly beckoning us out of our well-crafted ideological fortresses to be with Him in the discomfort and uncertainty of the tension we find between each other. Because He got uncomfortable for us to the point of an unthinkable end at hands of earthly politics and power.

Some have argued that we are at the nadir of American politics, civility and morale – or can we sink even lower? That choice lies not with our leaders, not with our perceived adversaries “behaving themselves” and agreeing with us.

It’s a decision we’ll have to make – more than once and fueled by the Love that speaks out of the silence – that connection and peaceful conversation with others is where the real adventure is. And great healing can come from quiet interchanges between friends committed to loving each other no matter what.

Whether we agree or disagree on any matter of temporal importance, I am grateful for you. 

Every one of you. 

And I wish you a Merry Christmas and a better-than-this-year New Year.