Pastor's Corner
January 2006

Cindy Wetz’s Christmas morning Invitation to the Joy of Giving bears repeating:

From A Child’s Christmas in Wales
by Dylan Thomas

Looking through my bedroom window, out into
the moonlight and the unending smoke-colored snow,
I could see the lights in the windows
of all the other houses on our hill and hear
the music rising from them up the long, steadily
falling night. I turned the gas down, I got
into bed. I said some words to the close and
holy darkness, and then I slept.

Growing up, as I did, on the flat glacier-scraped plain of northwest Iowa, Christmas was always blanketed in snow. It was not a question of whether or not Christmas would be white. We knew that it would. The question that teased our sense of the magical was whether or not it would actually snow on Christmas Eve.

Christmas Eve was the occasion on which my mother’s family – her parents, her two brothers and their families – would congregate at my grandparents’ house for our traditional Christmas Eve gathering. I lived in a small town – 254 inhabitants total. My grandparents lived 5 miles out in the country. It was a short pleasant drive which took us across the end of Main Street, past the fire station, the Methodist Church, the elementary school and to the edge of town, where we drove by the Baptist Church that my family attended.

On Christmas Eve we left town to go to my grandparents’ house just as the sun was setting. Just as the sky ws veiled in shades of lavender, blue and silver, mingling with the white barren horizon – punctuated only occasionally by brown trees, black angus cattle and the shadows cast by distant farmsteads. Always as we passed the Baptist Church, I stole a deep and wondering look at the few cars in the parking lot and the lights in the church windows. I felt a sense of regret that I wasn’t there, while at the same time I anticipated the festivities unfolding at my grandparents’ house with much excitement.

As the sun set rapidly, we arrived at my grandparents’ small country home and unloaded the car – full of food and gifts – by the maddeningly inadequate thin beams from the car headlights. We inched up the ice concrete steps, clutching the thin black metal handrail and then encountered the warm smells and sounds and sights of Christmas Eve. Mounds of creamy white divinity candy, black walnut fudge, brandy-soaked fruit cake, chili and oyster stew on the stove, pink watermelon pickles – the prettiest jar saved just for tonight – my grandmother’s anise candy, looking like shards of red-stained cathedral glass. These were mystical foods – most of which we feasted upon only at Christmas time.

After a night of indulgent eating, gift-giving and merrymaking, illuminated by candles, tree-lights and camera flashes, it was finally time to venture back outside, now into the frigid black air with the snow crunching and squeaking under our shoes.

The ride home was my favorite part of the whole evening. It was pure heaven! Magic, mystery and holiness were everywhere. The seemingly impenetrable black sky was littered with pinpoints of twinkling stars. The ditches and stubbly fields glistened in the darkness. And inside the car silence – except for the hum of the car heater, keeping the cold at bay. As we approached the dge of town, where the parking lot of the Baptist Church was now empty and the windows were dark, I felt a sense of wholeness, of completeness, of deep and abiding hope.

Just a short while before, as I stepped out of my grandparents’ home, I stepped into what Dylan Thomas so rightly called “the close and holy darkness.” And like Thomas, I have also often felt compelled to say some words to that holy darkness.

We are gathered here this morning to share our experiences of the close and holy darkness, to recite together ancient words, binding us to our ancestors in faith who sought the same mysterious reality we seek. We speak words meant to give shape and form to the darkness. We speak words proclaiming Immanuel – God with us. And then for me there are only two words left – Thank you. Simple and inadequate though it seems, “thank you” becomes an invocation for life itself.

So as you make your offering this morning, I invite you to recall your own experience of the close and holy darkness, that Mystery we have gathered to honor this Christmas morn. Merry Christmas! And welcome to the joy of giving.

Shalom,

Maureen

Maureen Dickmann, M. Div

Yale Divinity School, 1984

Pastor of Rockbrige Christian Church since 1987

Maureen has served on boards of directors and as president for local Habitat for Humanity, Food Bank, and Missouri School of Religion.

She has also served on the board of Comprehensive Human Services (Women's Shelter and Youth Homes) and the Anti-Racism Pro-Reconciliation Team of Mid-America.

Maureen won the Norenberg Prize for excellence in Preaching and Worship Leadership. She has also been published in "Preaching: Word and Witness."