I have often struggled to reconcile the unquestioning faith of my childhood with an adulthood that has often seemed to make a joke of faith.
I grew up in Pennsylvania where Christians included kids who went to churches like mine, kids who attended Greek Orthodox or Roman Catholic mass, and kids who had the daily prayers and Sunday services of the Amish and Mennonites.
One of my favorite Christmas carols was (and is) “I heard the bells on Christmas Day.” Two years ago I learned that it was a son of New England’s puritan tradition, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, who wrote the text as a poem on Christmas Day 1863. That year he had watched his beloved wife burn to death after her dress caught fire. He was burned while trying to save her. Later that year, he had traveled hundreds of miles to find and bring home his eldest son, who had been badly wounded in the Civil War.
I think it likely the cheer of Christmas morning in his house must have been at least partially artificial, something he generated for his younger children. I do know that later that day, as he sat in his house near the churches of Harvard Square in Cambridge, Massachusetts, he put his pen to paper.
If you omit the verse that specifically referenced the war, he wrote something that may resonate with many of us, as it did with me when I was small.
I heard the bells on Christmas Day
Their old familiar carols play.
And wild and sweet the words repeat
Of peace on earth, good will to men.
Then 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, good will to men.
Then sang the bells more loud and deep
God is not dead, nor does he sleep.
The wrong shall fail, the right prevail
Of peace on earth, good will to men.
Peace on earth, good will to men.
A year ago on the evening before Thanksgiving, I had emergency neurosurgery to clean out the infection around my spine that had developed after back surgery two weeks previously. I would end up hospitalized until the end of February for intravenous antibiotic therapy, for treatment to get the reluctant surgical wound to heal, for physical therapy to walk again.
I was never afraid of death. There were moments I felt an immensity of sorrow that I might not see my husband again, that I wouldn’t see my son into his adulthood, but I was never afraid. I didn’t need to look for my faith. It had never left. It was in my heart, built bit by bit from a childhood of religious observance and education, but more so by a childhood of watching how the truly faithful live.
I do not know what Longfellow felt while he wrote, but I know that I couldn’t appreciate God’s love and the immensity of living with faith if I had not lived through terribly dark times, months I lived in depression, years I have worried about making the right decisions for my only son, who was born with autism and more than a handful of other significant medical challenges.
This year I want to immerse myself in Advent, the season of preparation for Christmas, so I can appreciate the life of those without something larger than themselves to believe in and can recognize the miracle of knowing there is something so much larger than we are, a God who knows each of us, loves each of us, wants to walk through our lives with us.
I’ve heard the bells on Christmas day. They do not ring to say life will be easy, or assured, or bright and celebratory. They ring to call us to action, to live according to the beliefs we say we have. They ring to remind us that we can work toward a world in which there is true peace, one among the many vibrant peoples of humankind, not one of a temporary truce or, worse yet, the dead of war.
Whether you celebrate Christmas or not, consider your own season of Advent, your own time of getting ready, of reflecting how to show the world your beliefs one action at a time, one kindness or courtesy at a time, one act of tolerance at a time. One of the truths of the cultural Christmas is the recognition that we are bound together by more than separates us, that we can smile at strangers and see neighbors, that we can wish each other a good holiday and mean it. This is a season of good will, of thinking more about what we can give than what we might receive.
Enjoy the season. Enrich others’ lives. Listen to the bells.