Thoughts on preparing the church for Christmas

Yesterday I stood in the back of my parish church staring at the corner where the creche will go. The platform was set up already and the gold cloth was covering the lauan plywood and milk crates borrowed from the food pantry in the basement. We had trees--boy scout trees--set up the day before by Dominicans. I thought about the two of them chatting with each other, and some quote about how one of them had "tiny awesome Lebanese hands" and I have to hope they stay this filterless and cute when they are priests and give homilies to hungry parishes.

I needed to put up the lights on the trees. This is not my favorite task but I knew the trees were background to the main event. I strung lights together and started hiding the wires in and behind the trees.

This was not my job. That's what I kept thinking. Christmas decorating for 10 years now, and this was never my job. Sometimes I ran around pretending that I knew what I was doing. Sometimes I was more useful, attaching bows to wreaths and getting them hung on pillars. I often work on poinsettias. But I've never done this job.

This is Jack's job. And Fr. Miguel's. And other helpers who get this done while I act busy other places.

It was a palpable emptiness all around me.

I strung lights. I put the candle holders up. I placed the pieces of the creche, Mary and Joseph, the shepherd and angel. Tiny little sheep and a couple of farm animals. The three wise men, those crazy Zoroastrians, those first people grafted into the People of God, got placed to one side. They don't go to the stable or whatever it was, the minimal shelter for animals that Mary cowered in to give birth. They show up at a house. Joseph found them some place to live while the baby was still too young to travel. But the wise men are on their way and we have amalgamated the story into this hazy retelling of the birth of Christ.

The years, the past 10 years, are amalgamated as well for me. Decorating this church with Sister and friends and Fr. Miguel and so many folks. People still came this year, but I couldn't engage the same way. I got things set up. I kept myself from snapping at a young child that didn't belong to me. And I left. Joe suggested we meet in the morning to do the lights once everyone was gone. And we did.

Sal, the janitor, the constant at this parish for me since I joined, figured out we were in the church. Came over. Told us we should have called him. He could have helped. I had to smile.

In all this change and upheaval, in all this that I hate so much, the uncertainty of future and mourning of what is gone while still trying to celebrate what is here and new and real and present, thinking of my friend Zelda shake her head and say, "nothing stays the same, Bridgett" and snapping back, "I'm a Benedictine. Stability. It's supposed to be the same," and knowing in my heart that I don't mean that and stability doesn't mean that and Joe reminding me that we are caretakers of this place, which is a haunting word suddenly, caretakers, to take care, caring for without taking, that this isn't our place, we are just here to pass it on to the next people, Sal saying yet another time that it's only me and him now, always has been, and now it is again, only the two of us, which isn't true and yet somehow feels a little true and lonely and empty and I look around this beautiful magnificent cathedral of a church that I get to go to every Sunday and know it's going to be fine.

You can't take in Christ if you're overfull. No room at the inn? They can't come in.

Well I'm kind of spiritually empty. 

And I'm kind of happy.

Ready.

Amen.