Chaplain's Corner

For many it has been a rough year. Some have been forced to say goodbye to a beloved family member. Maybe it was old age, or some disease or a tragic accident, maybe it was suicide or the result of a criminal act. But we have been left with an empty chair at our table and a missing face in the pictures taken when the family gathers. The death you have experienced has left this emptiness in every aspect of your life and nothing can be done to undo it. We are locked into a reality we never wanted; even though we all knew that the potential was always there.

Christmas is a particularly difficult time for those in such situations. It is difficult because of the exaggerated expectation that we be happy at this time of the year, even though in our experience, the expectation of Christmas happiness is rarely actualized and we often feel disappointed when the dust of Christmas celebrations has settled.

Most Christian Hymnals contain a rather strange carol. It is strange because its tone is so radically different than Joy to the World or Away in a Manger. It is a carol that we often shun, leaving it unsung as we sing through the Christmas Carols. It is a song that originated in the deep and desperate grief of one of America’s most respected poets, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. The first Christmas after his wife’s death, December 25th 1862, he wrote in his journal, “‘A merry Christmas’ say the children, but that is no more for me.”  Then about a year after his wife’s death he received news that his son, Charles, was critically wounded by a bullet in the final days of the Civil War. His son recovered, but the war injury, on top of the death of his wife silenced him. His December 25th, 1863 journal entry contained no entry at all.

On Christmas Day 1864 he wrote the poem, Christmas Bells, which became the carol, I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day. Read the words of the carol and all of the sudden they make sense, they are the words of a grieve stricken man, struggling to deal with the horrible death of his wife, the debilitating war injuries of his son and the difficulties he was having just getting on with life. Here’s a copy of the poem as it was originally written that Christmas Day, 147 years ago:

Something was happening in Henry’s heart. His despair was deep, it had rocked his world profoundly, it had silenced his pen, and torn joy from his heart. Yet from that brokenness, from that grief grew a faith purer than Henry had ever experience. That faith was voiced in the final stanza of the poem: “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, good will to men.”

Possibly you are more familiar with the experience of Henry Wordsworth Longfellow that many around you. Perhaps you are sitting in a grief so deep that you would just as soon just close the curtains, leave the TV and radio off and stay away from everyone, because you just can’t deal with all the Christmas stuff this year.

Maybe those of us who aren’t there need to be a bit more sensitive, a bit more understanding, and not so upset with that someone in your life that is grieving won’t just snap out of it and get in the Christmas spirit. It may be that in the caldron of this grief, a deeper, purer faith in God is being forged, a faith that may sometime in the future be able to say, “”God is not dead; nor doth he sleep! The Wrong shall fail, The Right prevail, With peace on earth, good-will to men!”