LIFE IN THE STRANGEST PLACES
Author: Fr. Michael Byron
December 25, 2019
At the busy intersection of E. Lake Street and Cedar Ave. S. in the middle of Minneapolis there is a plot of land known as the Pioneers and Soldiers Memorial Cemetery. It is the oldest cemetery in the city, dating back to 1853, and it was full to capacity about 90 years ago. It closed for business in 1927.
The name of the place is a little misleading about the soldiers’ part, because there are very few of them buried there. It’s mostly filled with the first residents of the city, the vast majority of whom were poor and immigrants from Europe. Many or most of the gravestones today are weatherworn, or broken, or missing or otherwise incapable of revealing who exactly lies there. The names and the stories are almost all forgotten, although it is known that about half of those remains belonged to children who died from diseases that we don’t think much about any more.
It is a very quiet and mostly overlooked place today, surrounded by a tall fence. As all the traffic speeds past it is easily ignored. And who cares today anyway? I didn’t until last week.
A friend of mine told me an amazing story. She was stopped at the intersection and had the feeling that she was being watched. She turned and saw a large deer just staring at her from inside the iron gates of the cemetery. She works near there, and she passed by a few days later and the deer was still there. And then again a few days later—same thing.
How could it have gotten in there? Where could it have come from? How could it survive the cold and winter? She was concerned and she called the city’s office that manages such things. She was assured that even if the deer decides to stay there until spring she’ll be just fine. With the trees and undergrowth for food, and with the snow for water, she is safe and welcome and apparently at home. New beautiful life in a mostly forgotten place of death. It’s a wonderful Christmas story.
On this holy day/night, we remember again the amazing arrival of new life into a world that had grown old and dead and cold in its disappointments. Our Savior too arrived in a most unlikely way in a place that people would scarcely seem to notice, a forgettable place among apparently forgettable people—lowly shepherds and their animals. Who would ever expect to find him in a cow shed, homeless and unwelcomed?
And that is exactly why the story still matters for us, all these centuries later. That is still how our God comes to us—in places and among people who seem to be dead, or at least insignificant. In situations that seem overwhelming or hopeless. In the dead of our nights and the chill of our winters, suddenly there He is—gazing at us, if we are not too busy or preoccupied to notice.
Who would ever set out to find a deer on Lake Street? Impossible!
Who would ever set out to find God in Bethlehem? Impossible!
Who would ever set out to find hope in the face of despair? Impossible!
Until it happens.
And if, like my friend, our first response is to worry and to be unbelieving, the assurance is the same one that she got from the city: It’s all OK, and even more, it’s as it is supposed to be. God’s own choice is to break in to situations and among people where it seems God doesn’t really belong because the circumstances seem so impossible.
Beautiful new life in a forlorn place of death. This is our faith on this Christmas feast, and for this we can only be amazed—perhaps a bit bewildered—and filled with joy.
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