Soul Food -- Michele Marr

Michele Marr

“Praises sing to God the king, and peace to men on earth” -- from ‘O

Little Town of Bethlehem by Phillips Brooks

Last week was my husband’s birthday. It wasn’t a birthday we planned

to celebrate big. It wasn’t a decade milestone. And it fell smack in the

middle of Lent -- not a great time for cake and ice cream or a Chart

House filet mignon. So we decided to celebrate with a simple home-cooked

meal and a rented movie.

I put dinner in the oven and went out for a video. It had been so long

since we’d seen a movie I had far too many to choose from. The more I

looked, the harder it was to decide on one.

I fidgeted with the box for “Moulin Rouge” while I considered another

film, “Six Degrees of Separation.” Someone recommended it to us, though I

couldn’t remember who.

The title comes from Stanley Milgram’s theory that every person in the

United States is connected, at most, by a chain of six people. The theory

is also known as the small-world phenomenon.

I was deep into considering the plausibility of the idea when I heard

a very young voice singing, “Jingle bells, jingle bells, jingle all the

way.” I looked around.

I saw a very little girl dancing her heart out in a corner of the

store near me. In full, aerobic, Britney Spears-style she paced, and

pumped and thrust her arms to the out-of-season tune. “Oh what fun it is

to ride in a one-horse open sleigh.” She wrapped the number up with an

in-your-face clench-fisted cheerleader stance.

Then she slid her feet neatly into a ballerina’s second position. Her

arms rose ceremoniously above her ponytailed head. She raised herself up

on her toes and began to turn. “Oh little town of Bethlehem how still we

see your light,” she crooned with words a little different than the ones

Phillips Brooks wrote.

She turned and hummed the tune until she found a few more words she

knew. “And peace to men on earth,” she ended softly. Her right leg

extended. Her head and arms came down in a solemn bow.

I had read of Bethlehem that morning. No peace, no stillness was to be

found there now. I had clipped two front-page photos of the city from a

local paper and the Washington Post, and laid them on my desk along with

a photo I’d taken there years ago.

One news photo shows Bethlehem, and the bell tower of the Church of

the Nativity, illuminated by flares. Under a dark sky, the bright white

glow of the buildings could just as well be a Christmas scene -- the city

under the star of Bethlehem -- except for the caption, “an Israeli army

attack on Palestinians at the Church of the Nativity.” The Palestinians

were armed, holding priests and nuns hostage inside the church.

In the other news photo, a fire rages in the town. Night is turned to

day, or day to night. It’s impossible to tell which. The third photo, my

snapshot, shows the bronze star in the Church of the Nativity that marks

the place of Jesus’ birth. I took it during a more peaceful time in

Bethlehem.

That day I walked the streets of the city with my husband. We visited

the Church of the Nativity. We browsed in nearby shops. At one, the

shopkeeper told us he had a brother who owned at pizza restaurant in Old

Town Orange.

We all laughed.

It amazed and amused us to think that we were thousands of miles from

home, standing in the city where Christ was born, speaking to a man whose

brother lived and owned a restaurant not far from our California

hometown. It is a small world, we agreed.

I wonder where that shopkeeper is today. I wonder if he’s among the

merchants who have lost tens of thousands of shekels in merchandise amid

the destruction in the city. I wonder if he is among those who have lost

their lives. Perhaps he is serving pizzas for his brother in Orange.

I have a pilgrimage candle from the Church of the Nativity. I burned

one in the church and took this one with me as a sweet memento. I’ve been

thinking of burning it as a votive candle in prayer.

That peaceful day in the town of my savior’s birth seems not so long

ago. But peace for those who live there now seems very far away.

* MICHELE MARR is a freelance writer and graphic designer from

Huntington Beach. She has been interested in religion and ethics for as

long as she can remember. She can be reached at o7

[email protected]