It’s Christmas Eve at the farm on Willow Road. The house has long fallen asleep as I atone for my procrastination. I had every good intention to bang out this annual greeting in the light of day; but one marvelous distraction after another intervened. Visits with family and neighbors, eating way too much, quiet meadow walks in the first snowfall of the season, gift exchanges and a late night roughhousing session with Julia has its way chipping away at the time.

So here I am, bleary eyed and typing away feverishly next to a window, cracked open to let the chill of the night air keep me awake; but also in hopes that I will hear some spooky night sound that would quicken my pulse in my younger days.

Julia has lately come into the habit of waking early, sometimes as early as 5am, and this morning was no exception. I decided to let Jocelyn sleep and took Julia downstairs to snuggle in the cool darkness of the farmhouse in the comfort of her grandfather’s easy chair.

I love the moments of quiet that visits to the farm afford. They give me time and space for contemplations that simply will not deepen and grow in the shallow soil and frenetic pace of my daily life.

But as my daughter dozed on my chest, the thoughts that came to mind were not comforting ones. In the quiet of the pre-dawn light, I finally let myself embrace a taste of the pain to which I had been consciously numbing myself.

I’ve been watching, in horror, over the last several months as this world has seemingly been tearing itself apart. I pondered the empty arms of the parents of twenty Connecticut school children who are still in the throes of their grief. And I’ve watched as our nation – the world, in fact – struggles to right itself in the midst of the shock; our politicians and pundits scrambling for air time to push the “one agenda” that will supposedly be the solution to the mess we find ourselves in.

The tragedy this year has not been limited to people outside my community. I’ve been watching over the past several weeks, sometimes helplessly, as a nearly thirty-year marriage of a couple very close to me has quite simply imploded before my eyes.

In so many domains, in so many hearts, a piece of our collective innocence has been taken from us.

And I wonder what is it about the holiday that brings this melancholia out of me. Never mind. You don’t need to know how deep that rabbit hole goes; and any of you who have been following these over the last few years will know that it ends with more hope than it starts with.

Later in the morning, I read the backstory of an old Christmas carol that a friend had passed along to me the day before. I was surprised to learn that it was adapted from a poem that Henry Wadsworth Longfellow had written in the depths of personal despair. Having lost his wife in 1861 to a horrific and accidental fire that permanently scarred him as well, he would write that Christmas of how “inexpressibly sad are all the holidays.”

But that would not be the only sadness that Longfellow would experience. His eldest son, against Longfellow’s pleading, took a commission as a lieutenant in the Army of the Potomac and sustained a grievous wound in 1863 (he would eventually recover after a long convalescence). A year later, on Christmas Day of 1864, Longfellow penned a poem that began with despair and loss, and the seeming irony of the bells that tolled for peace in war’s midst…

     I heard the bells on Christmas Day
     Their old, familiar carols play,
          and wild and sweet
          The words repeat
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!

     And thought how, as the day had come,
     The belfries of all Christendom
          Had rolled along
          The unbroken song
     Of peace on earth, good-will to men!

     Till ringing, singing on its way,
     The world revolved from night to day,
          A voice, a chime,
          A chant sublime
     Of peace on earth, good-will to men!

     Then from each black, accursed mouth
     The cannon thundered in the South,
          And with the sound
          The carols drowned
     Of peace on earth, good-will to men!

     It was as if an earthquake rent
     The hearth-stones of a continent,
          And made forlorn
          The households born
     Of peace on earth, good-will to men!

     And in despair I bowed my head;
     “There is no peace on earth,” I said;
          “For hate is strong,
          And mocks the song
     Of peace on earth, good-will to men!”

And if Longfellow’s verse had finished there, darkness would have won. And in my moments of despair, it has been scarily easy to let myself give in and be utterly overwhelmed by the hatred, the senselessness, and the crushing grief all around.

But there is so. much. more.

In the midst of the pain, there are reminders of the beauty that will eventually overtake it.

As a whole nation and I were struck dumb by the shootings at Sandy Hook Elementary, while some commentators repeatedly asked if God was, at best, an absentee landlord and other commentators shot back with the standard right wing theo-social talking points, a friend decided that she was going to simply be different. Here is her Facebook post less than a day after the incident:

          This is my “Do Something” in response to my visceral maternal alarm bells.
          Hurting people hurt people. So I will love people. I’m going to be a one woman
          love flash mob. I will make eye contact. I will smile. I will love on my sphere of
          influence and help them love on others. It’s not just a gun control or mental
          health issue. I think its a love issue too. A fear issue. I will not live in fear
          and turn inward. Love always beats evil. Always. It has to. Join me. Share this.
          Smile. Love. Do Something.

I’m embarrassed to tell you that all I could manage at the time was to choke out four words in response:

Bravo, my friend. Bravo.

But for me, it was an early reminder that this season reminds us of: In love for us, God came to those who wanted no part of love so that the reorientation of history and the transformation of our futures could be made possible.

The small decisions to love are not all I stand in awe of. I have friends who are pursuing a creative way toward peace between Palestinians and Israelis. Others are pulling up stakes in the comfort of the suburbs to continue their lives in the neighborhoods of Detroit. Others have decided that clean water should not be a luxury for the Pokot people in Kenya and are working tirelessly to drill wells. Some of my favorite people in the world have committed their lives to build an enclave of hope and beauty in the midst of despair in Dowlaiswaram, India.

Perhaps the reminder of Love enfleshing itself in humanity on that unlikely day in that unlikely place is the invitation of a return to the innocence that we lost. It is in these and countless more reflections of that love where the last stanza of Longfellow’s poem is made manifest:

     Then pealed the bells more loud and deep:
     “God is not dead, nor doth He sleep;
          The Wrong shall fail,
          The Right prevail,
     With peace on the earth, good-will to men.”

Peace on earth, goodwill to all humankind. To that worthy mast, I have fastened my heart. To that improbable, inconvenient, overcoming, all-consuming truth of a here-and-now Savior (who I do such a lousy job representing), I commit my life to pursue.

And whether or not you decide to pursue with me, I think we can all agree that the world would be a better place if we decided to love first and do something out of an overflow of that love.

I give God thanks for all that you do, and wish you all the best for Christmas.