"Tell the truth but tell it slant
Success in circuit lies
Too bright for our infirm delight,
As lightning to the children eased
With exploration kind.
The truth must dazzle gradually
Or every man be blind."
~Emily Dickinson
The stories we tell point us toward a truth we can embrace. No story holds the same truth for every person. How we enter into a story depends upon so many things……our gender, our place of birth, our age, our life experience, our biases, our frame of mind at the time of the hearing or reading of the story. These factors and so many more inform how we see truth in a story, how we can allow that truth to transform us.
I am thinking about the story of Christmas when I write these words. This story which helps shape the faith of those who call Christianity home is colored by all these same factors. No one person finds the same equal amounts of truth and transformation as the story comes round again to be told. Here we sit with another year under our belt. Changes have given new shape to how we see the world. Losses have left holes in our hearts. Joys have filled empty spaces left raw by the simple act of living. This year as we enter the Christmas we may find ourselves drawn to the awe-struck shepherds instead of the glamorous magi. We may come to see ourselves more in the patience of the animals surrounding the manger rather than using our heralding voice like the angel Gabriel. Others may find themselves in the place of quiet rest, embracing the newness of life, as did Mary and Joseph on that first Christmas, as do most new parents. All the places where truth can be found in these words depends on what is happening in our lives, what has happened since its last hearing.
Perhaps I am thinking of this because I just returned from the wedding of my only niece. As I watched the families gather and was awe-struck by the beauty and promise of this young couple, I became aware of how each of us were experiencing the story in which we were all players in very different ways. The young couple were the center of a story they had planned and prepared for over more than a year. Their grasp of ecstatic joy caused them to literally glow. I watched the father of the bride, my brother, choke back tears as the truth of his now grown daughter was held in tension with his memories of the young daughter who first won his heart. As the mother of the bride congratulated the couple with words of love, she also was letting go of a relationship she had honed for over two decades with her only child and taking on a new one with this now married woman.
And so it went from grandparent to aunts and uncles, from cousins to friends, we all were seeing this story play out from our own vantage point. We were seeing the truth being told for each of us in our own way. The truth I saw being played out was mine, not that of anyone else at the wedding. While we all experienced the joy of the day we could only do so through our own lens, through our own experience.
Like the Christmas story we will hear in its entirety once again, we will find a new truth that is ours for this year. It won't be heard in the same way by the person who sits near us or those who sit rows away. It will be our privilege to once again open our ears and our hearts to the truth that will be ours this Christmas. And to that I say: "Alleluia!"