Silent Night

It was the last and only cooler, wet day of a summer Austrian vacation.  I set out on the train to see where Silent Night was written on Christmas Eve 1818.  (Tonight is its 200th birthday!)

On the train to Oberndorf I mused that this really wasn’t the weather for adding meaning to an alpine Christmas carol.  Grey skies and rain did not evoke the spirit of the song which I knew had been first sung on Christmas Eve in Oberndorf church.  I tried to ignore the weather and dreamed of the mountainside setting where Max Gruber the organist wrote the tune that set the priest Joseph Mohr’s words to life and fame.

The train, disappointingly, started to leave the hills behind.  Now my imagination was having to adjust to the alpine village being, well, not very alpine.  By the time the train stopped at the first of Oberndorf’s two stations I had figured that this town was about as alpine as Dartford.

I headed for the town centre.  Peering through the drizzle I waited to cross a busy road to visit the church on the town square.  'This must be it', I thought.  Sadly the road had the silent ambiance of the rush hour in a London suburb.  The spirit of the old carol seemed further away than ever.

It was indeed further away than ever because, on finally crossing the road, the church noticeboard helpfully pointed out (in English for any misguided American or British tourist) that this church was not the one where the carol was sung.  Worse still, it informed me that the old church and village, formerly by the river, had been flooded so often that they had been demolished and rebuilt inland here.  The scrap of good news was that a memorial chapel now stood at the old site with a shop and museum.  So, my visualised alpine snow-covered mountain church having been reduced to a souvenir shop on a patch of low lying river bank, I headed that way. 

Ten damp minutes later and I was at the riverside site.  There I was able to relive a little bit of Oberndorf history - regrettably it was the wrong bit of Oberndorf history.  Two months before there had been another enormous flood.  The museum and souvenir shop had been completely inundated and were now closed.  I looked at the patch of grass and concluded that I had enjoyed Silent Night somewhat more before I visited Oberndorf than I was likely to do from now on when, every future Christmastime, it triggers memories of a long, flat walk in the rain to a grassy patch of anonymous mid-European river bank.

We always think we can add things, experiences, activities and memorabilia to improve the original Christmas, which merely had God moving through a womb to a manger as one of us. 

Merely?  With everything we add we lose a little of the wonder of the amazing grace he gave us in  the Christ-child.

Happy Birthday Pratibha!

Today is Pratibha Patil's birthday.

Pratibha was India's President and to date the only woman to have held that office.

As our Parliament - of which we are supposed to be so proud - mires itself ever more deeply in the swampy jungle of Brexit two of her comments (about the Parliament of India) are poignant, to say the least:

It is important that the decorum and dignity of the House is upheld at all times.  The image of Parliament in the public mind should be one where proceedings, debates and discussions take place with a view to resolve issues through a constructive and co-operative approach.

Parliament of the country is the repository of the sovereign will of the people and its successful functioning is the responsibility of both the Government and Opposition.

Quite.

St John Roberts

Today is the Anniversary of the execution of one of the many namesakes of mine.  Saint (for that is how he has become known) John Roberts was Welsh (as Robertses always ultimately are), born in 1577 to a farming family.

Namesake he may have been, but in very many ways our paths seem quite opposite.  Born into a Protestant home John was converted to Catholicism in France.  In the febrile world of Reformation and Counter-Reformation religious politics he found himself in the wrong religion in the wrong place.

In returning from Europe to London he knew he was in mortal danger, but he wanted to work among London's poor anyhow.  From this act of foolery or bravery came his execution.  Yet even at his Tyburn execution the usual cruelties of that age were mitigated by his popularity with the poor.  They would not permit the authorities to treat his body with quite the cruelty they normally would have done - at least not before he was dead.  London has a very long list of cruelties on its hands;  it has also, as Charles Dickens for one reminds us, always had plenty of The Poor.

From his village birth to die at 33 years of age in the capital city after having a reputation for looking after the poor?  Well, for all my Protestantism I can see some reasons to think of him as saintly and a reminder of Someone else.

George H W Bush

A peculiarity of  being a Pastor is that, although most days reinforce a sense of how inconsequential you are seen to be by the world, you do get to meet a disproportionate number of important, famous people.

One such for me, and whose memorial is happening today, was George H W Bush, the 41st President of the United States of America.  The occasion of meeting him - or more strictly of him meeting me - was when he visited the Church in America where I was on the staff.  He came to speak a greeting at one of the morning worship services and he was brought to meet those of us with whom he would be sharing the platform.

It was naturally a brief encounter, but it was long enough to feel the warmth of personality that has been eulogised today and which contrasts with what is sometimes experienced from lesser women and men.

But back to the meeting.  Did I meet him or did he meet me?

Well, I was at work; I was in a room that I frequented dozens of times in the course of that work and George Bush, I imagine, had never been into that room before.  He may never have been to the church premises before.  It seems to me that he met me.  I was where I would usually be and he wasn't.

Which neatly brings us toward Christmas.  For is it not one of the greatest and most wonderful things about Christmas that we do not go to glory to meet God until, first, he has come to our place - in truth somewhat beneath our place - to meet us?  We meet him because he first meets us.