Lights out in Bethlehem and why that matters
/I keep thinking about the little town of Bethlehem, the avowed city of Jesus Christ’s birth in Israel’s West Bank, and how they put away their decorations for Christmas, before Christmas.
The majority of Bethlehem’s population is Muslim. As the Israeli-Palestinian war wages on, families are grieving the loss of a staggering number of lives, the largest share of which includes women and children. Accordingly, the local government and churches of Bethlehem conferred and decided to remove the Christmas decore and to scale back any festivities in the town that had been a major tourist destination in the past.
What does it even mean for one faith tradition to choose to bear witness to another’s? It seems so powerful, and generous, and kind of hard to believe, honestly. I don’t find humans, namely Americans entrenched in a culture of capitalist overconsumption, especially good at holding space for others’ grief even in times of great sorrow.
We are often so hellbent on being human doings than human beings.
I think about Sandy Hook. I think about twenty six families burying children and teachers slain. I think about Christmas and Hannukah presents that would never be opened. I think about parents receiving condolence cards instead of Christmas cards.
And then I think about how school shootings have risen dramatically. How the past two years have seen historically high numbers, practically one per week. It makes me want to hunker down like Bethlehem for awhile.
Following Sandy Hook, Ann Curry had suggested 26 good deeds in response, and a movement of contagious kindness spread. Channeling so much sadness into positive action can feel productive, and even healing. However, sometimes the very act of abiding--that is, to take no action but to merely endure alongside the bereaved and hurting--is the kindest way to show up.
In C. S. Lewis’s A Grief Observed, a memoir about the loss of his wife, Lewis writes about the impossible limbo of receiving condolences from others, “I see people, as they approach me, trying to make up their minds whether they’ll ‘say something about it’ or not. I hate if they do, and if they don’t.” Similarly, writer Sarah Wildman shares in a recent essay about the loss of her 14 year-old child, that eventually the text messages “slow and stop.” She notes that “holiday markers are as hard as promised” but it is her daughter’s daily absence that is the “cruelest blow.”
I think how I might write an imaginary holiday letter, sent to the masses of people who are kind enough to remember me and my mailbox at this time of year. Hey Y’all. First Divorced Christmas. Totally broke! Trying to meet my healthcare deductible! How ‘bout that monologue in the Barbie Movie, though?! Kids are fine. Funny. Sometimes moody. Me too, honestly. I’m mostly okay-ish. Sending love from Boston! xoxo
We try ever to say the rightest thing, to impart the most appropriate greeting. Then life knocks you sideways and you realize sometimes you’ve got to put your decorations away. There’s just no masking the sads.
Like the city of Bethlehem, no one is asking us to dull our sparkle. Solidarity is not a store looking to hire more seasonal employees, but rather a union that relies on volunteers. Sometimes the kindest thing we can do is merely to consider others’ pain. To imagine the space left by the empty chair at the dinner table, or the spot on the mantle where they hoped another stocking might hang. To wonder how great their river of sorrow must extend and into which tributaries of their lives it touches.
If the moment feels right to stand in solidarity with someone in pain this holiday, I hope we can do so. The experience may unite us with generations who have felt left out in the cold at the holidays, with no room left at the inn.
