"Light Casts Out Fear"
Several years ago during a Lima area ministerial meeting we were sharing with one another our favorite Christmas stories. I told them about The Piano Man’s Christmas and several from The Guideposts Christmas Treasury including “Trouble at the Inn”, the story of Wallace Purling. I was desperate for a new one.
Dawna Boyles, minister of Central Christian Church, introduced us to storyteller Roger Robbennolt and his book Tales of Gletha The Goatlady. I want to share with my blog community on this Christmas Eve one of my favorites from that book: "Lanterns in the Snow." (I'm pretty sure this is way too long to be considered legal. My confessing that probably could be forgiven if a few of you go out and purchase the book! But, certainly don't repost!)
I suppose one of the primary reasons I originally chose to share this story was because of my having so many first-hand experiences with families who've had their own challenges with mental illness - the most personal being my own brother and the impact on the whole family. I suppose I choose it this year because of the growing seemingly popular notion that all mental illness might result in tragic consequences or that all tragedies are the result of someone coping with mental illness. But, I'm a little ahead of the story. The book itself needs a little background before I share today's/tonight's chosen story.
Gletha was called the goatlady because she raised goats. Most of the people in Bear Run Township where Roger Robbennolt grew up just “knew” she was a witch. Roger thought himself to be the one person in the whole human race she really liked. It was to her home he often escaped when his manic-depressive adoptive father went on a tirade. Roger was born in a prison where his birth-mother was an inmate. She tried to raise him for three years. He was finally dropped off at an orphanage with a battered head and three broken ribs. Gletha was Roger’s adoptive mother’s maternal aunt. With that brief introduction hear now “Lanterns in the Snow” for the insights it offers us this Christmas Eve.
My father feared the darkness. His fear deepened in the gloom of December as Christmas, the time of light, drew near. As long as the kerosene lamps were ablaze from sundown until bedtime, he could endure the star-shot blackness that surrounded our tiny shack.
In the Yuletide season, his spirits healed a bit as he watched the lamplight reflected on the Christmas tree decorations: the single ten-cent package of tinsel - bought years before and carefully removed from each ensuing tree because there was no money to buy new - and the patches of sparkle on the eleven peeling red balls which had graced evergreens the twenty years of my parents’ life together.
When my father was at the height of his anger or the depths of withdrawal, Gletha would appear, a pail of warm goat’s milk in her hand, its secret additives disguised by a dash of Karo Syrup. He would swear and order her out of the house and forbid my ever moving through the woods with her again. However, her offerings occasionally shortened his times of darkness. To this day, I wish I knew the healing herbal combination in her gifts.
The Advent season when I was nine glows in my memory. Thirty-seven inches of snow had fallen in three weeks. Four days before Christmas, the wind-driven flakes began to fall again. My father and I fought our way to the barns to care for the cows, sheep and horses. During a break in the storm, we watched a tragic wilderness ballet: a deer floundering in the deep drifts killed and devoured by a pack of wolves.
There was little to do during those blizzard-shrouded days. However, one pastime went on incessantly: rubbernecking. (Young people who are reading this may want to talk about "rubbernecking" with your parents and/or grandparents at some family gathering.) There were eighteen families on the party telephone line - each with its own distinguishable “ring.” Our ring was effected by someone cranking out a short and a long and a short and a long. When another family’s ring was heard, everyone on the party line became adept at covering the mouthpiece with one hand while quietly easing the receiver off the hook with the other in order to listen in on the conversation.
My aunt Floy was among the more persistent rubberneckers. She had one handicap: a small dog named Yip who tore loose with a horrendous cascade of barking at the slightest provocation. As Floy listened, she’d forget to cover the mouthpiece. Yip would sight an offending squirrel through the window and let out a torrent of noise. One of the callers might well shout,“Floy, git off the phone. We want to talk about you.”
The blizzard continued through Christmas Eve Day. Each passing hour brought more concern to Mother and me. We had used the last of the kerosene - and God only knew when we’d be able to get to town to purchase more. The candles, too, were gone. We faced the prospect of celebrating the Christ Child’s birth in fear-filled darkness fought by my father with outbursts of physically expressed anger.
As night erased the pines on the far edge of the clearing, my father and I came in from the barns. He had clung to my hand like a jittery child as we made our way through the thick-falling snow. Entering the tiny kitchen, he opened the lid to the cast iron cookstove. The red glow from the coals reflected on the tears coursing down his face as he cried out to my mother, “Mary, can’t you do something about the dark?”
My mother moved to the wall-mounted phone and cranked out three shorts and a long. The booming voice of a mile-distant neighbor could be heard rolling out over the receiver. My mother pleaded with him: “Ted, can you spare a little kerosene for tonight? We got terrible sickness over here. Frank is really down. We just can’t face spending a night with no light.”
“Mary, I got a little extree, but it’s still snowin’ to beat the devil, and there ain’t no way I can get it to you unless the snow stops. There’s not much chance of that happenin’.
“Well, bye, Ted - and thanks anyhow. Don’t let yerself git blowed away. And listen - you all have a Merry Christmas.”
She hung up the receiver and paused for a moment, leaning wearily against the wall beneath the phone. Daddy had seated himself in his creaking rocking chair by the potbellied stove, clenching and unclenching his fists.
I stood by the window, staring at the last ghosts of blizzard-shattered light. Then I saw her: Gletha, the goatlady. With her soft grey cloths flowing behind her, she appeared to be riding the drifting snow, waving her arms in a slow cadence as if conducting a symphony of the elements. The wind gentled. The falling snow lessened. Through the clouds, burst the incredibly bright light of a full moon starkly detailing every aspect of the Christmas Eve landscape. I blinked my eyes in disbelief - and Gletha was gone.
Then they appeared like fireflies in the distance - some from the north and some from the south: lanterns - seventeen lanterns growing larger as their bearers came nearer. My father heard my gasp of amazement. He stumbled to the window and shoved me roughly aside. He cried out, “Mary - my God - the lights - look at the lights!”
They came on that Christmas Eve, the light bearers. But they bore more than light. Though jobs were scarce and gardens had dried up and the snow was too deep to care for trap lines, everybody brought something to share. Tilllie Mauldin had come up with the makings of mincemeat pie. Bill Cooley had some ground venison. Gyp Matthews brought corn to pop. Thirty people or more crowded into the tiny living room and kitchen. In their midst was Gletha, the goatlady, with her magic pail of milk and secret powders and the dash of Karo Syrup. For those few moments on that magic evening, the fact that she was suspected of witchcraft - and smelled pungently of the goats she cared for - was forgotten.
She suddenly lifted her hands, and silence settled on the celebration. She said quietly, “I think there’s good spirits a’bornin’ here.” She raised her rich voice in “Silent Night,” and everyone joined in. The Child in the manger became as the snowbound sheepsheds fifty paces off.
We sang and laughed and shared far into the night. Ted rolled in our kerosene barrel, and everyone poured half a lantern-full into it. We would not be without light.
As the crowd moved out to the front yard shouting Christmas greetings, Gletha’s voice was joined by all in one last hymn, “Amazing Grace.” As folk, lanterns in hand, moved out across the moonlit snow, blessed on their way by the sung words of God’s gifting, their pattern assumed the shape of a gigantic moving star. I knew that our Bethlehem had been visited by flesh-shaped hope. (1)
We will attend Christmas Eve services because we believe and to remind ourselves of that belief that Jesus Christ is the light of the world - we’ll attend Christmas Eve services because we believe and to remind ourselves of that belief that Jesus Christ is the light that casts out fear and brings new meaning to all we experience in this life and the life after - we’ll attend Christmas Eve services because we and our world are in need of the hope and peace, the light of the world, Jesus Christ, provides - we’ll be present in order to reconnect with the light of the world, to have the spark of faith within us blown upon by the Holy Spirit so that the fears that threaten to immobilize us might be consumed by the inferno that results and we’ll go to recommit ourselves to living our lives as light-bearers to those in need of a little light in their lives. Jesus Christ is the light of the world. We are his light-bearers.
The world is in need of our doing what we can to provide light where there is darkness. It certainly isn't in need of our closing doors or extinguishing the light in others by beating them up with God's Word become flesh. Inclusion, not exclusion. Love, not hate. Peace, not war. We need to be the light-bearers of hope, kindness, understanding, compassion, acceptance, and encouragement. May it be so in all of our lives!
Merry Christmas! Happy Holidays! Seasons Greetings! To all this day, night, tomorrow and every day.
1. Roger Robbennolt, Tales of Gletha the Goatlady (Ave Maria Press, 1993).
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