All over the world this week children will don costumes to act out the Christmas story. Tea towels will be tied around heads to make a six year old look like a shepherd. Bath robes will be worn to create what looks like the magi. Little girls will wrap their heads in blue fabric and put on their best face to appear like Mother Mary. A boy will look a little sullen standing by her side to represent Joseph. Ears and tails and pajama-like suited children will portray sheep and cows lowing. And anxious parents and pageant directors will hand long poles to the tea-toweled shepherds and pray that said pole remains a staff and not a light saber. Multiple photos will be taken by grandparents and parents as the story of the first Christmas comes to life starring their offspring. It is a sweet and poignant tableau, one that only the Grinchiest among could not be charmed by. At the church I attend this happened last Sunday and each of us left the service feeling lighter, more hope-filled and dowsed a bit by the Spirit of Christmas.

The idea that this happens every year never ceases to amaze me. We do not do it with any other of the stories from scripture. Yet, each year, it happens and we look forward to its happening. I have thought about this phenomenon over the many years I have either directed or watched the story come to life. And over time I have come to believe that the act of creating this pageant and telling this story once again allows each of us to enter the story in a new way, from where life has taken us this particular year. The year I had a new born at Christmas I identified with Mary at the miracle I held in my arms and I truly ‘pondered all these things in my heart.’ I imagine the parents who are trying to shepherd a wayward child wishing that the work was as simple as ‘watching over the flock by night.’ And the angels…oh, the angels…hovering near singing over the new life, the worried parents, the humble beginnings of such a family. I have a sense that our hospitals are filled with just such beings whose wings are not quite visible but being such a presence.

This year the characters that most fit my own story are the wandering Wise Ones. In the journey we have all been on over the last months and now years, we have indeed been traveling a road that was unfamiliar, treacherous, and toward some future we cannot yet see completely. The twists and turns cause us to stop and take stock of what is guiding us, where it is safe to go and where it isn’t. And many times we have found ourselves needing to ‘go home by a different road.’ A few years ago I wrote this poem I called Night Seekers:

What must it have been like?
No maps, no highway.
Only the twinkling of stars
and the deep, velvet blue of sky
to guide their way.

What courage –
to step out in their search
following the brightest star,
propelled by a deep knowing
that they were, indeed,
on the right path.

Their visions in the night
fueled their longing,
to see, to know, to behold,
a world transformed,
led them further and further
until there was no turning back.

Gaze turned heavenward,
they traveled on.
Stars illuminating the sky,
they traveled on.
Until…there
right before their eyes.
Everything was forever changed.

May this Christmas find us reflecting on the transformation the last months have brought us and finding the courage to embrace the very best of it. May our eyes scan the nighttime sky looking for the Star that will guide our way and lead us toward a peace we have yet to realize for the infants, parents, shepherds, angels and wise ones among us. Blessed Christmas to all.

Going through some of the many photos I’ve snapped over 2021, I came across some I had taken when I was in Columbus, Ohio over the summer. The images took me back to the stunningly beautiful day and the sculptures suspended in a beautiful garden in what is known as German Village. The sculptures were such a delight and were filled with a winsome quality that made the day even more special than the blue sky called forth. 

Looking back at the photos, I was reminded of the song from the musical Wicked called “Defying Gravity”. This powerful song ends the first act of this story that allows us to know how the Wicked Witch of the West comes to be the evil character that haunted our childhood dreams. It seems, according to this telling, that Elphaba(the Wicked Witch’s name before going to dark side), saw through the Wizard all along and that he was not really a hero but a con artist and one with evil intentions toward the animals of Oz. Glinda, the Good Witch, doesn’t see the Wizard in this way and tries to talk her out of exposing him as they share this song. It is a break in their friendship and in their lives. Elphaba’s refrain is:

Tell them how I am defying gravity!
I’m flying high, defying gravity!
And soon, I’ll match them in renown
And nobody in all of Oz
No wizard that there is or was
Is ever gonna bring me down!

These sculptures which had all who were walking through the park that day craning our necks in wonder at the way the figures and, in turn, the artist gave a taste of ‘defying gravity’. I venture to say all of us were a bit envious of the power of these beings to fly high above our heads. We longed for the freedom of lifting above the Earth and seeing the world with new eyes.

For much of my life I had a recurring dream of flying. I think this is pretty common. My ability to fly started with me beginning to move my arms as if I was swimming, the front crawl, limbs moving through air, not water. Soon my whole body would lift up and I would be flying above the ground and all that was happening below to those who had given in to gravity. I haven’t had this dream in some time and I miss it…and the way in which I felt so light, so free, so able to see further than my grounded eyes could ever do. I don’t know how dreams work but if I could ask the dream gods to be visited with that dream again, I would certainly do it.

In the last two years during these pandemic times, wouldn’t it have been wonderful to be able to defy gravity and lift up to see things with a clearer view? What might we have seen and learned? The answer to that likely depends on one’s perspective to begin with. But I do know that an equally powerful story to that of The Wizard of Oz, The Tales of King Arthur and the Round Table, contains a wonderful scene where Merlin gives the young Arthur the ability to fly. As he soars over the landscape, Merlin asks his student what he notices. Arthur says: “There are no boundaries.” The landscape and the people who share that vista were all in it together, there was no division. The vision of the Round Table becomes the place where people can see one another with connection and, in turn, compassion. 

There are gifts to both gravity and defying it, I suppose. As we move toward a new year, I pray for the ability to defy what is holding me down to old ideas, past hurts, bygone patterns that no longer serve. May it be a time of reflecting on what these months and now years have taught us. And may we find a refreshed enthusiasm for what draws us together and lifts us above all that would bring us down.

***If you haven’t seen ‘Wicked’, I invite you to check out the many Youtube videos of different folks singing this powerful song.