The Secret of The Barn

There is a church on a hill just outside of my hometown neighborhood that, year after year, sets up a small, wooden barn at the front of their lawn. They fill the floor with hay, but aside from the night in which they use it for a live nativity, this makeshift lean-to of a barn sits empty and dark. However, for the past three seasons of Christmas, I have pulled up into the parking lot late on Christmas Eve night or Christmas night, walked out to this wooden shed, and knelt in the silence of the night. It has become something of a tradition - a ritual if you will - for me at Christmastime. Though seminary has taught me that our traditional religious concepts are slightly incorrect in recognizing what exactly was the poor shelter for the travel-weary Joseph and Mary so many years ago, this small barn that the people of this church have erected serves me well, if not in a scripturally accurate manner, but a metaphorical manner.

This barn has served as a kind of confession booth for me. I kneel - or, when my knees and ankles begin to shudder in discomfort, sit - before this empty space and I speak with God. It is a two-sided conversation, but not in an audible way. God replies with quiet; his reply is in his gracious silence. I poor out my heart, however reluctantly, and describe the tumultuous and joyful emotions that have filled my heart and mind over the past year. Sometimes I am quietly rejoicing when I come to the barn, other times I am wracked with the guilt of familiar sin. I am beginning to understand I am most often, in my day to day life, a measure of both. At the threshold of the barn I rest, with my hands dug into my pockets for warmth and the sounds of the night becoming a non-intrusive cacophony around me - nocturnal birds rustle and occasionally chirp, nearby coyotes bark at each other and the stars, domestic dogs respond in their own words, insects click and go about their own business in the grass. It is a noisy scene that would have terrified me when I was younger; in those years I would have been certain some ghastly creature was slowly slinking toward me in the shadows, intent on devouring me. But, now older, the peacefulness of the empty barn calms me, even when my childhood fears echo in my head as I ponder and pray.

I believe that there has been so very much attached to this "holiday season" that is despicable to God, in the talking points of the Religious Right as they rant and rage about the commercialism of Christmas vs. the complete disregard of the season, nor is it in the recovery fire of their opponents as they growl about the loss of deep tradition and sarcastically attack those who have made Christmas, and what is more, Christianity, into an empty shell of a religion, devoid now of any life-altering significance. (Oh how I so often side with the latter.)

In the quiet of the barn I begin to notice, even as I find peace in my personal confession and request for blessing and direction, that God is revealing his very nature to me, his nature that stands unchanging and unblemished by all of this holiday confusion. He is silent. He is quiet. He is both desperately concerned and transcendently uncommitted with the hub-bub both Christians and non-Christians are making out of this season. His Church is both deeper and grander than such things, and I feel that it is his only desire that we all forget "Christmas" and remember the Savior. That we would do as I feel the very throne room of God does: fall silent before the reality of the Incarnation. It is new every year, yet is historically from of old, and such a truth, when really pondered, silences even the most righteous tongue.

The angels may indeed break into a heavenly chorus, and the coyotes howl back and the insects chatter and the birds warble, but God Most High sits quietly and blesses the Incarnation and communes in powerful silence with all those who would stop and rest with him.
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Here are some photos from my holiday break, in which I have helped Leigh move back to Houston, spent some time with her and her family as well as my own, and enjoyed a good, replenishing rest.