On Monday December 21^st  and for the next couple of days until Christmas Eve in the early evenings along with many others I will be looking up into the sky hoping it will be cloudless as I attempt to see evidence of one of the celestial rarities. I will be searching for what is called the Great Conjunction which is the coming together of Saturn and Jupiter in their closest alignment since 1226.  The event happens  when the solar system’s two largest planets appear side by side in a “great conjunction” above the horizon soon after sunset.

It has been reported that the Vatican believes that the original Star of Bethlehem may have been such a Great Conjunction. Be that as it is may at the end of the coming week, we will be celebrating the Christian festival of Christmas. It will be a time of especial importance to those of Christian belief but even to the millions of others who are not Christian, Christmas Day has a significance way beyond its 24 hours. This year we will be spending the day in very different ways to the norm. This will be exceptionally hard for many not least those who have been separated from their loved ones for too long in care homes and in community.

Twenty-nine years ago, I was privileged to spend some time in Bethlehem and in Israel-Palestine in general. Bethlehem is a town of modernity etched with memory; its significance as a place of new beginning and possibility is worn wisely upon its ancient shoulders. It was also beyond the romanticism of tourist trinkets and pilgrim souvenirs, a place of grinding poverty, inequality and discrimination. But one of my lasting memories of my time there was that it and its predominantly Palestinian inhabitants were singularly proud of belonging to a place of becoming, of being citizens in the birthplace of the Christ. I remember talking to someone there and quizzing them about what was special about the place given that there was huge historical and archaeological debate and scepticism about most the so-called ‘holy sites.’ The response was simple, ‘This is a place where the ordinary is turned into the extra-ordinary.’

There is indeed a truth in that analysis. Throughout the history of both the cultural and theological depiction of the birth of the Christ, there is an inescapable simplicity of interpretation, which would contend that this is all about the ordinary becoming extraordinary. In a turning of the tables of expectation Christians believe that divine power and omnipotence incarnates itself into the fragility of flesh and blood. The power of the universe and creation is imaged in the vulnerability of a new-born, defenceless child. The assertion is that the extraordinariness of divinity becomes the ordinariness of humanity, and by this the Christian story asks for the elevation of humanity in all its reality, vulnerability and pain.

So, next week when I look to the skies, I might not be searching for a Star of Bethlehem, and given the Scottish weather I might not even see a Great Conjunction, but I will spend time reflecting on the truth that it is in the ordinariness of our living that we are surprised by the extraordinary, that wonder and awe is enshrined in our humanity lived at its best.

And as I reflect, I will know deep down that the year that has passed has evidenced that truth. We looked out from lockdown and watched folks going about their daily work despite carrying the burden of fear. They were ‘ordinary’ people doing ‘ordinary’ jobs which on any other day and at any time would have gone unnoticed, unheralded and poorly rewarded. They were the home carers, the cleaners and supermarket staff, the nurses and bus drivers, the care home staff and hospital porters. They were evidence of the ordinary being turned extra-ordinary.

As most of us sat cocooned in safety away from the virus, we witnessed communities coming together in acts of generosity and kindness, finding solidarity in the midst of suffering, and supporting one another to be our better selves. Whilst the air may have been tangible with absence and isolation, there was also as sense of mutuality and concern, which went way beyond the clapping of a Thursday night or the platitudes of politicians.

Christmas is about turning the tables of expectation upside down. The coming days will undoubtedly be filled with concern and anxiety for many, regret and loneliness for yet more. They will be days of memory when the absence of a loved one who has died will ache particularly hard. There will be moments when Christmas days of the past, togetherness and laughter will fill memory and bring tears. But I hope it will also be a time when we think of those who have given to others in so many ways in the months that have passed. They have given to each of us the priceless gift of compassion and community. This may be a Christmas less ordinary but it is also one whose strangeness should give us space to reflect and remember, to be thankful for and to commit to being different and better.

One of the most famous poems of this season is the ‘Journey of the Magi’ by T.S.Eliot. Written nearly a 100 years ago, and now most definitely of its time, it describes the experience of the Magi, the ‘wise men’ of our childhood nativity stories who followed a celestial happening to arrive at the birth of a baby. In one glorious phrase Eliot describes them changed by the experience of following that star to see birth contradict expectation. The experience transformed them forever so that they could not go home to the routine predictability of their past life. ‘We returned to our places, these Kingdoms, But no longer at ease here, in the old dispensation,’

I hope that whatever we do on Christmas Day and whoever we are with, that we might look to the skies and spend some time thinking of those whose ordinariness of living and loving in the last nine months has the potential to transform us all, and as we do to remember those for whom this season is one of sadness and absence, and who this year will be more alone than silence. I hope we will give space and time to all those unnoticed and unloved. I hope that we can all have the courage to find a determination to learn from the pain of the last few months and commit not to return to the way things have been or still are, but to walk together into the creation of a new, more human way of being. I hope that we will carry with us into that future the gift of ordinary loving made extraordinary.

Happy Christmas  when it comes.

“A cold coming we had of it,
Just the worst time of the year
For a journey, and such a long journey:
The ways deep and the weather sharp,
The very dead of winter.”
And the camels galled, sore-footed, refractory,
Lying down in the melting snow.
There were times we regretted
The summer palaces on slopes, the terraces,
And the silken girls bringing sherbet.
Then the camel men cursing and grumbling
And running away, and wanting their liquor and women,
And the night-fires going out, and the lack of shelters,
And the cities hostile and the towns unfriendly
And the villages dirty and charging high prices:
A hard time we had of it.
At the end we preferred to travel all night,
Sleeping in snatches,
With the voices singing in our ears, saying
That this was all folly.

Then at dawn we came down to a temperate valley,
Wet, below the snow line, smelling of vegetation;
With a running stream and a water-mill beating the darkness,
And three trees on the low sky,
And an old white horse galloped away in the meadow.
Then we came to a tavern with vine-leaves over the lintel,
Six hands at an open door dicing for pieces of silver,
And feet kicking the empty wine-skins.
But there was no information, and so we continued
And arriving at evening, not a moment too soon
Finding the place; it was (you may say) satisfactory.

All this was a long time ago, I remember,
And I would do it again, but set down
This set down
This: were we led all that way for
Birth or Death? There was a birth, certainly,
We had evidence and no doubt. I had seen birth and death,
But had thought they were different; this Birth was
Hard and bitter agony for us, like Death, our death.
We returned to our places, these Kingdoms,
But no longer at ease here, in the old dispensation,
With an alien people clutching their gods.
I should be glad of another death.”

T.S.Eliot, Faber and Faber.

 

Donald Macaskill.

Regular readers will know that my family roots for generations are in the peat and crofts of Skye. My own parents were the first of their line to venture permanently from their villages to seek livelihood elsewhere. They were representative of thousands who sought economic security and prosperity away from the straths and glens of their upbringing. In the years after the wars of the 20^th century echoes of emptiness began to fill once vibrant places. My parents were part of the so-called ‘Highland Diaspora’ which formed in the cities of the central belt and most especially Glasgow. Indeed, my late mother used to say that she heard more Gaelic spoken on the Dumbarton Road in Patrick than in her own home village. So much so that my earliest memories are filled with recollections of ceilidhs, song, poetry and entertainment which almost became a weekly ritual of re-connection, a binding back to home and a renewal of identity. What they found in their newly adopted city was a place of welcome, a people open with practical ways of making you feel that you belong, neighbours able to catch hold of hurt and offer healing, a place willing to learn from the stranger and change when it was needed, a community moulded by warmth to make the stranger feel at home.

But despite a real sense of belonging, I also always felt in my parents a sense of dislocation and tension. They loved Glasgow and it’s in your face realness and freedom, but they also ached for the abandonment of hills and the warmth of Hebridean belonging, they yearned for the familiarity of language and dialect, for the predictability of the changing landscape of their childhoods. They were in every sense of the word migrants in a city of tenement and sandstone, and maybe it’s not surprising that their friendships were often with those who knew the rhythm of their own heritage and sensed the timbre of their own tale. It is maybe not surprising that my mother especially formed friendship so easily with those who came new to the neighbourhood, regardless of which part of the world they came from. In their eyes she saw the sense of yearning but also the desire to belong.

It is I suspect because of the sense of being the child of those who had not fully settled, those who felt at first strangers amongst the people around them that I have always warmed to the experience of the incomer, the migrant, and the new arrival.

A lot of those emotions came back to me last week when I received an email from someone I know who works in a care home. She is Polish and with her family has made Scotland her home over the last decade and a half. Her letter was one of both gratitude, sadness and anxiety. Like many others in our care homes during Covid19 she has gone above and beyond in compassionate care for those who she supports. She is no less committed to ensuring the dignity of residents today than she was at the start of the year. But what has changed is a growing sense within her that she is increasingly not welcome, not by her colleagues, her community or even her nation. Rather she expressed a deep concern about the implications both of the Brexit negotiations and also what the new measures on UK immigration might mean for others she knows. She described a growing media rhetoric and political tone which has made her feel she is not needed, not wanted and not welcome. I find it deeply sad that she is so unsettled by a political environment which has created such uncertainty, division and at times xenophobia. The contribution which she and so many thousands of others have made over the years to making Scotland into the place I call home can never be under-estimated. Over 6% of our care workforce in Scotland come from countries in Europe other than Scotland. They have shown themselves to be the best of us, full of life and love, compassion and care, a living example of how you build community by having an open door rather than a closed gate. Yet in recent weeks and months so many have been made by others to feel unwelcome and unwanted.

Next Friday, the 18^th December, is the United Nations International Migration Day. It is a day to recognise the astonishing contribution of those who leave their place of birth to go elsewhere. It is a day to affirm their human rights.

In a very real sense, we are all of us the inheritors of the courage of those who despite all the odds moved from their own place to go out and to seek a better future and a new life, some because of little choice, many because of the ambition of their humanity. Scotland perhaps more than any other nation is a nation of migrants.

The mark of any civilised society is the extent to which you prepare a place of welcome for the migrant. It is a descriptor of the nature of true community which we are increasingly called to protect and advocate for. The UN states that today more people than ever live in a country other than the one in which they were born. While many individuals migrate out of choice, many others migrate out of necessity. In 2019, the number of migrants globally reached an estimated 272 million, 51 million more than in 2010. One of every ten migrants is under the age of 15.

As the son of those who were strangers in a new place, and as I remember those from my widest family who left these shores to go to distant parts of the earth to make their own beginning, I recognise both the ache and the loneliness of their experience, but I also acknowledge the vibrant, ingenuity, contribution and skill brought about by those who together seek to create a new community and a new nation. The Covid19 experience has taught us all how connected we are one to the other across the globe. It has shown that the solidarity of compassion is stronger than self-interest.

Today as I write this blog there is real uncertainty over the future of our relationship with the European Union as Brexit talks go to the wire. But regardless of the traumas ahead one thing I remain convinced of, and that is that to be strong, creative, contributive and compassionate, we need to hear voices that are not our own, dialects which are new to our ears, ideas which challenge our practice, innovation which upsets our predictability – in other words we need to be a nation that welcomes the migrant and the stranger. It is only as we weave together the threads of our common humanity into shared purpose that we create true community and a modern nation.

Years ago, I spent time reading the stories of those who had been immigrants from Europe into North America. Many of these were Scots and I remember looking for my family name on the etched memorial stones of Ellis Island and searching for ancestors amongst the stories of arrival in Canada. Their memories resonated with the feelings of my own parents and forbears who left Scotland.

In Halifax, Nova Scotia, where so many from Skye arrived as strangers, there is a tremendous collection of poetry written by the new settlers, some at that moment, other years later. I end with one of these because its simplicity shows what we gain by being a place of welcome, by having an open door to the world. It shows that what our care sector has cherished the most from its international workforce, is not solely an economic or physical contribution, but rather the dedication of individual hearts which is daily given to create new community. We dare not lose this.

It was a
rough crossing

their landing
delayed by fog

& darkness.
Four of them

travelled inland
knowing nothing

of this land now
theirs. A

lifetime later
the sole survivor

returns to
this place bearing

witness to
an act of courage

recorded now
on fragile paper

& on the surface of
a human heart.

A poem written by Harry Howie, a Scottish Immigrant, who travelled aboard the Aquitania, arriving October 1948 in Pier 2, Halifax.

Donald Macaskill