O Little Town

Tom and I had been on the road with Ritmo D, Keynote’s summer Latin band, for almost three weeks. That’s eleven (mostly) Hispanic (read: loud, emotional, not time-conscious) people riding in a 12-passenger van and equipment truck, eating together, setting up together, playing music together, tearing down together… There was a LOT of togetherness! Toward the end of the tour when we were all sleeping in a church sanctuary on the chairs-- which made very comfy beds, actually, when facing each other-- I found myself enjoying the extended quiet in a bathroom stall. As my soul took a deep breath, my heart began to sing, and then my voice sang the tune out loud in my pink ceramic resonance chamber. The melody grew kind of like a Glade commercial where beautiful flowers and vines spring up out of the sink and from behind the mirror, until my soul was once again full of life.

Singing takes the weariness away and lets out stuff in me that can’t get out any other way; it picks up my heart from behind a van seat where it got left in the urgency of the ministry before me and rejuvenates it. A new song in my heart, I left the bathroom and went back into the sanctuary, climbed into my eight-chair-bed and fell asleep before I could notice the snoring, irregular breathing, and faint salsa music emanating from iPod headsets.

So we get back home, and weeks pass before I remember the “bathroom song”. When I rediscovered it recently, I tried fitting various hymn lyrics to the tune, since it has a kind of hymn-like quality. The best fit was “O Little Town of Bethlehem”. To be honest, I was a little disappointed that a deeper, rich-in-theological-truth text didn’t turn up. But since OLToB fit so well, and I needed a Christmas card song, I followed that thread… and found a familiar tapestry saturated with color and shades of meaning.

Philipps Brooks, the carol’s author, was one of THE pastors in the 1860’s in America, and he was American as they come, being from generations of pastors going back to the Puritans. Preaching at Trinity Church in Boston every Sunday, Pastor Brooks had a rapid delivery style (someone reportedly clocked him at 250 words a minute!) because he had so much to say (that sounds familiar!) to his beloved congregation, most members of which had tragically lost someone in the Civil War. This great, but deeply sensitive man, carried the grief of his church family. And when the war ended, joy was short-lived as five days after Lee’s surrender, more heartache covered the nation when President Lincoln was assassinated. Because of his renowned eloquence, Pastor Brooks was asked to give the oration for the president’s funeral. Soon after, because of the prolonged strain he had been under, Brooks came to the end of himself, completely broken,.

He left his pulpit and traveled to the Holy Land for an extended Sabbatical. Riding on horseback through the fields surrounding Bethlehem on Christmas Eve 1865, probably near where the angels spoke to the shepherds the night Jesus was born, Brooks paused and contemplated what had happened in that place long ago. Reading through the lyrics and knowing what he had just been through, it’s easy to imagine his thoughts that night: pastoral peace as he watched shepherds with their sheep contrasted with the carnage of war and national turmoil at home; sweet silence without telegraph messages and newspaper stories of horrible violence; blessed comfort from the incredible presence of the same God who had been with him in Boston, still with him as he looked over the town where his Hope was born. On Christmas Eve in 1865 overlooking Bethlehem, Brooks was reminding himself that “the hopes and fears of all [his] years” were met in Bethlehem that night.

When I was singing in the bathroom in a Brooklyn church this summer, I wasn’t weary with the kind of cares Pastor Brooks had carried, but in a sense, we found the same release in stillness and in letting our hearts sing.

O little town of Bethlehem, how still we see thee lie!
Above thy deep and dreamless sleep the silent stars go by.
Yet in thy dark streets shineth the everlasting Light;
The hopes and fears of all the years are met in thee tonight.

For Christ is born of Mary, and gathered all above,
While mortals sleep, the angels keep their watch of wondering love.
O morning stars together, proclaim the holy birth,
And praises sing to God the King, and peace to men on earth!

How silently, how silently, the wondrous Gift is giv’n;
So God imparts to human hearts the blessings of His Heav’n.
No ear may hear His coming, but in this world of sin,
Where meek souls will receive Him still, the dear Christ enters in.

O holy Child of Bethlehem, descend to us, we pray;
Cast out our sin, and enter in, be born in us today.
We hear the Christmas angels the great glad tidings tell;
O come to us, abide with us, our Lord Emmanuel!