Name your sources: Frederick Buechner, Glennon Doyle, Scott Erickson, Thomas Merton, Richard Rohr
***
“What the Innkeeper Saw”
It was so long ago now.
“No room! No room!” is all they remember me for.
But how could they know what I had on my plate that night? How could anyone know the truth?
A regional census doesn’t take place every day, after all, and the rooms had been booked months ago. As an innkeeper, I live in the land of the ten thousand things: sheets to wash, towels to change, floors to sweep, coffee to brew.
Do you think I knew? When that bedraggled couple wandered in, no more than 17 or 18 the two of them- do you think I knew who was standing in front of me?
All I saw through my tired after-dark eyes, were a woman heavy in her last days of pregnancy, walking in that plodding way that women with child do- that kind of lead-footed trudge, with that dazed look in her eye.
And the man with her- he said he was her betrothed, but they weren’t married and yet and I don’t know what else he said, because if you’ve heard one sad-sack down & out story, you’ve heard ‘em all.
He had the most earnest look in his eye, though, like getting a room for his fiancée was as urgent as finding water in the desert- and maybe it was. No doubt they were thirsty too, poor kids- their sandals dirty and their faces smudged with the wear and tear of a three days’ journey on foot.
Or at least I think that’s what they said they’d walked. How can I remember? You have to understand we were all worried then- we didn’t know what this new census from Caesar Augustus would mean for any of us: more taxes? More drafting into the military?
***
For years I’ve been cast in this story as a careless villain, turning away the holy couple. But you have to understand from my point of view- I was just doing my job. No vacancy means no vacancy. Failure to plan is planning to fail, as they say.
Besides- in our culture, family stay with family. If this woman was with child, why weren’t the man’s aunts and uncles and parents taking them in? Surely they had plenty of relatives traveling to Bethlehem to be accounted for in the census. Couldn’t someone in their family have given up their room for a woman about to go into labor? Their own kin?
It didn’t add up. In my experience, if your family cast you out, there’s usually a reason. And I’m a business man. I don’t want riff raff staying here and word getting around, that turns more respectable customers away.
What I really wanna say, is that I just didn’t see them fully, if you want to know the truth. If I had, maybe I’d have noticed something special about them. Some look in their eye, a catch in their voice. Something other people talked about later.
***
What I do remember about that night is that there was the most exquisite sky. I sat outside and worked on my account books, with nothing but the light of the moon and the stars.
I saw out there in the desert darkness and there was this one star, see? I wish I could describe it to you. It was the kind of light you don’t forget. More than just the hydrogen and helium and those gases your scientists know about now-
No, this star had a kind of music to it. A kind of face, even. I don’t know how else to say it. Almost like the way a mother or father sings you a lullaby to sleep, and you know it’s going to be okay. But then it was also like a torch- a kind of lit-up lamp that lights the way to show you something you can’t otherwise see- a force illuminating your path till you find the oasis of water for your parched soul to drink.
And after all, I did give her something to drink. The woman- I think her name was Mary, right? - she asked for a drink of water, and I had another guest to check in but I went and had my son go get her a little clay vessel to drink from.
And then my son said the strangest thing, after he came back. He said, “Dad, why don’t we at least let them stay downstairs- in the cave area where the animals sleep?” We always put them in at night, so they don’t get harmed or stolen, the cows and sheep and so forth.
I didn’t love the idea at first- but the pleading look in the son’s eyes- I had to find somewhere for them to stay.
My boy then did the work of fussing over the feeding trough and turning it into an almost acceptable place to put a baby, fluffing it up with hay and all.
Later that night, when the baby came, I was not there. I was lost in the forest of my mind somewhere, the unenchanted forest of a million trees. Fifteen steps to the cellar, and watch out for your head going down. Firewood to the left. If the fire goes out, the heart freezes.
***
I went back to my books and checking in other guests. Time escaped me. I must’ve dozed off at the front desk because I woke up with a start- it could’ve been five minutes or five hours later- and what I heard was the faintest sound of singing.
I figured some of the guests were having a family reunion sing-along and dismissed it at first. Looking back, I might’ve even been hallucinating- hearing the harmonies of the most angelic choir, almost like it was coming from the sky.
It’s been years since I really believed for sure in any God. But I think they were singing a chorus of “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth, peace, goodwill to all.”
Our world could sure use some peace. Even my own heart- I’d take a dose of goodwill now and then. Is this true? Is what I think I heard real?
Before I knew it, it was over, and my son came in to tell me the young lady had her baby and everyone was safe and well. I sent down more water and went to bed and didn’t think a thing more of it.
***
But later that night- was I having a dream? Or the kind of half-sleep you have when you’re somewhere between dreaming and waking? All I can say is it was a kind of presence- something akin to what I sensed in that star. Like a voice telling me to make room.
Make room? For what?
Then as I listened, it was more like a song again… echoing with the faintest of chorus- “In my father’s house there are many rooms. And I go to prepare a place for you…”
All these years later, when it comes to God- if I say, “I BELIEVE!” that would be a lie. But if I say, “I believe…” it might be closer to the truth.
***
What if the one I’d been waiting for all my life came that night, and I missed it?
Too busy, the forest of ten thousand things, too swept up in all I was doing to see the thing in front of me that knew me before time began?
What would you do if you missed the miracle?
There’s a song that says, “Let every heart prepare him room.”
I keep thinking about that night- how they showed up at my inn, and there’s no room, no room.
How, in our preparation for perfection- we leave no room, for what is.
We don’t leave any room for our own peace.
And we don’t leave room for people to be themselves – for strangers to become friends. For those who’ve been cast out- to find a place of belonging.
We just squeeze everybody out of the picture so that we can make this perfect picture of what somebody told us it was supposed to be.
So I think this holiday, maybe we just prepare room for it to be what it is.
***
And if you’ve had loss this year and you have grief, then you just make room for that.
And if you have had divorce and you have had death and you have had pain- then there is room for all that.
And the truth of Christmas, as I’ve come to learn later in life- is that everybody else was looking for this king in all the shiny places, and the joy and the peace and the beauty was in the most unexpected dark corner- of the downstairs barn area of my own inn.
Maybe when we leave room for ourselves and our people and what is-
when we really stop to see what’s in front of us and watch for that star and listen for that music-
The holy magic just comes and we don’t have to force it.
***
One of your spiritual teachers later said that we live in the time of no room, which is the time of the end. The time when everyone is obsessed with lack of time, lack of space, with saving time, conquering space, the anguish produced within them by the technological furies of size, volume, quantity, speed, number, price, power, and acceleration.
Now there is no room for nature. No room for quiet. No room for solitude. No room for thought. No room for attention, the basic unit of love.
God’s place, they say, is always with the others who do not belong, who are rejected because they are regarded as weak. With those for whom there is no room in this world, God is rooming right next to them.
***
I’m not so busy anymore like I once was. I don’t host as many guests, I don’t worry as much about the business. Life and hardship happen to us all, including me.
And I’ve found that suffering- and solidarity with the suffering of others- has an immense capacity to make room inside of us all.
But there’s one more thing I wanna tell you.
It happened at least 30 years after that night.
That little baby born down in the manger, surrounded by the oxen and sheep- he grew up to call himself a kind of Shepherd. Word has it he did all these healings and feedings and miracles. I don’t know. I didn’t see it. Could be just rumors.
But here’s what gets me- I heard that just before the end- when they arrested him and were about to crucify him- he gets interviewed by Governor Pilate, see?
And there’s all this questioning and this man- the same little baby born to that pitiful couple- well, that baby’s all grown up now and he’s got this crown of thorns on his head and all the leaders are threatened by him. They don’t like what he’s been teaching. They don’t like who he’s been hanging out with. And they want to execute him.
But this man- the one they call Jesus- he tells Pontius Pilate that he’s come to bear witness to the truth.
And Pilate looks straight at him- the guards said so later- the Governor stares Jesus down and says with all the authority that official office and helmet and armor and palace can give you- and demands to know, “What is truth?”
And Jesus – he just— he’s silent.
He just stands there.
He stands.
And stands there.
And when I heard that later, that’s when I knew.
I missed him that night- I said no room, no room.
Pray for me, friends- that he’ll make room for me.