Only the pigeons

My friend Bob was a journalist before answering God’s call to the priesthood. Fortunately, he brought the skills of his first calling into the second, as was clear to the staff of the Episcopal newspaper he edited.

One of the things we all knew about Bob was that he wrote his sermons the same way he had written articles as a reporter for the local paper—on cut sheets of newsprint, double-spaced with proper margins. Those cut sheets of newsprint became collectors’ items among those of us who wanted to preserve his words for future reference.

The other thing about Bob: He wasn’t a particularly gifted preacher, as preachers go. Bob was more of a storyteller. Regardless of the pulpit, in a tiny chapel or a cathedral, he simply told stories, with some of their most unforgettable lines dropped over the edge of the pulpit so casually you might wonder if he really just said what you thought you heard.

So people listened. They really listened. They might have said they were listening to the stories, but underneath, they were hungry for those over-the-edge-of-the-pulpit lines that sometimes got turned into handmade posters—“Hug a leper,” “Dog in the snowstorm”— plastered on the hallways of a church or two. So it was with the pigeons.

That sermon, as I recall (having failed to locate the cut sheets of newsprint containing the actual words), was about his friend Phil, an American priest who was serving in Guatemala. While the bulk of the story is no longer with me, the memorable line came after a vivid description of Phil climbing steep narrow steps to the very top of a bell tower and finding there that local artisans had painted intricate designs “where only the pigeons would see.”

This image, lodged somewhere in my memory bank, has come soaring out as the holiday season of the covid-19 pandemic approaches with its social distancing mandates. If government guidelines are followed, there will be no large family gatherings, no holiday parties. No drop-in visitors.

So conversations have arisen about whether we will bother to decorate. “Is it worth the effort?” “It will only be me.” “It will just be the two of us.” Each time the question comes up, I want to shout, “Only the pigeons! Only the pigeons!” Since we can’t physically get into church to hang posters, I want to post it on every Zoom whiteboard.

However my friend Bob completed the story, this is my takeaway. It doesn’t have to go into your memory bank if it encourages whatever effort you are willing to make to decorate for the pigeons. For you. For the coming of the Christ child. You and I are the artisans of our lives. The canvas we have been given this Advent is not a smooth one, primed for an artist’s brush.

The Babe did not come into a perfect world that night in Bethlehem, nor does His arrival this year depend on perfection, the coming of vaccines or absolute compliance with face masks and social distancing. He will come despite it all—the perfect gift in the midst of the uncertainty and brokenness that is Advent 2020. His coming is not dependent on lavish displays of Christmas lights, picture-perfect mantels with stockings hung just so, or whether the tree is the Charlie Brown kind or aspiring toward Rockefeller Center.

I, the artisan, climb whatever symbolic steep and narrow steps define my life this Christmas with paintbrush in hand and joy in my heart to celebrate that no pandemic can stop His coming or the light He brings into the world. I will “paint” because I am beloved by Him and worthy of the beauty of the season, whether it is a single candle, a tree full of treasured ornaments or a Nativity scene whose empty manger awaits His arrival. You, the artisan, climb your own steep and narrow steps to create the intricate designs that illuminate life and persistence and hope. We are also, in these darkest nights of the pandemic, the pigeons, witnesses to beauty, awaiting once more the return of the light.