His Discovery: The Best Gift We Can Give Ourselves and Others As We Close Out 2020
He is a famous and renowned artist the world over and I’m sure you’d know his name. He lost his wife of eighteen years in a freak accident, a tragic fire. He adored her.
He is just grappling with the depression her death brought on, when his family’s story takes another turn. There is incredible civil unrest in America and we all have different responses to it. His son decides the stakes are too high to just sit on the sidelines and watch what’s happening, so he makes the choice to get involved and help bring about justice.
It’s June and the father gets a concerning call: he’ll need to go pick up his son because he has contracted a virus that has nearly killed him. He’s over the worst and is no longer contagious, but needs to be home receiving care and attention. His son recovers and goes right back out to the front lines, feeling that many are counting on him, knowing that his cause is a righteous one.
Five months after that first call. It’s now November. The father is notified that this time his son is the victim of a shooting and the bullet has barely missed his spinal cord. Again, he brings him home to recuperate after he is well enough to be moved.
Christmas is fast approaching and he doesn’t feel in the “Christmas spirit” at all, in spite of his other kids trying to cheer up their widowed father. “Come on, Dad, let’s listen to our favorite Christmas music!” I can imagine them saying. After the death of his wife, he wasn’t sure he’d ever have a “Merry Christmas” again. Then, his son’s health and trauma. America feels in shambles. Americans hate each other and feel misunderstood. Such vitriol! He is at a loss to make sense of it all.
And then, on Christmas morning, he goes outside. What he hears changes everything for him, and, if we let it, I believe it can change everything for us too.
This Christmas, 2020, will mark 157 years since the most famous poet of his time in America, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, walked outside and Heard the Bells on Christmas Day. His story could not feel more contemporary. The tragedy. The depression. The virus. The political polarization. The fighting of systematic racism and injustice. The civil unrest we would later come to call the Civil War.
On that all-important Christmas day in 1863, Longfellow wrote:
I heard the bells on Christmas day
Their old, familiar carols play,
And wild and sweet the words repeat
Of peace on earth, goodwill to men!
We hear sweet Christmas songs and they give us all the feels. But do they have the power to elevate us from darkness?
And in despair I bowed my head;
“There is no peace on earth,” I said:
“For hate is strong and mocks the song
Of peace on earth, goodwill to men!”
How appropriate these lyrics feel for 2020. Despair. Just wanting us all to get along. Wondering how we could have become so polarized that we despise each other this much. Hate is indeed strong, and does seem to mock the idea of peace on earth, goodwill, cheer, love and happiness for all of humankind.
Some of the little-known middle stanzas of Longfellow’s Christmas poem-turned-song highlight the darkness and violence the country was plunged into.
Then from each black, accursed mouth
The cannon thundered in the South,
And with the sound the carols drowned
Of peace on earth, goodwill to men!
Will we let the cannons of our hate and our violence drown out the sound of peace on earth and the possibility it brings for healing our country?
Another middle stanza left out of the song version:
It was as if an earthquake rent
The hearthstones of a continent,
And made forlorn the households born
Of peace on earth, goodwill to men!
Are the hearthstones of our continent, the foundations, being torn apart by an earthquake made up of Covid and racial injustice and election disagreements? Are our households, once so hopeful and forward thinking, forlorn as a result?
Then pealed the bells more loud and deep:
“God is not dead nor doth He sleep!
The wrong shall fail, the right prevail,
With peace on earth, goodwill to men!”
The belief that we are not alone, that there is a force greater than us, assuring us that in the end, evil will fail and good will triumph, peace will reign, is powerful and pivotal, no matter what your faith (or non-faith) leanings. From beliefs like“The Universe has my back,” to “Life is happening FOR me, not TO me,” to “All things are possible if you believe” and “All things work together for good,” having a larger worldview, one that hopes and longs for peace, is as of vital importance in these tumultuous times as it was back in 1863.
Till, ringing, singing on its way,
The world revolved from night to day,
A voice, a chime, a chant sublime
Of peace on earth, goodwill to men!
Oh, how we need this hope! The hope that our world can and will shift from dark night to beautiful day, all envisioned to the “sublime” soundtrack of peace on earth, goodwill to men, is what we all need right now.
Many of us have sustained heavy losses this year, including friends and family we’ve lost, financial security we’ve lost, hope we’ve lost and peace we’ve lost.
No matter who or what we put our faith and trust in, one thing we can all come together around and wish for our fellow Americans is peace on earth and goodwill. I hope you’ll join me in celebrating this possibility for each of us. It’s the healing gift we can give to ourselves and each other, the gift we need more than anything else this Christmas and holiday season.
