| Cathleen Falsani

A Christmas present that kept shrinking

BIG SKY, Montana — Blaise Pascal, the 17th century French philosopher whose deep thoughts were collected in the work Pensees, once said that the “greatest perceptible mark of God’s omnipotence” can be found in nature.

Sitting in a cabin a few feet from the snow-covered banks of the Gallatin River with Lone Peak towering 11,000 feet above me in the distance and moose tracks leading into the forest right over there, it seems easy to see that Pascal was right on the money.

There’s something about being in a place where the biggest, tallest thing around isn’t man-made. It’s humbling and inspiring. It’s staggeringly beautiful here, like the whole of western Montana is God just showing off.

While there’s nothing in the Official Playbook of Faith that says an inspiring vista is required for a spiritual epiphany, it sure seems to help. After all, according to Scripture, Jesus, Muhammad, the Buddha and many of the saints and prophets wandered in the desert and hung out in the mountains when they were seeking wisdom.

Maybe it’s not even the breathtaking qualities of the surroundings, but the fact they’re not what we encounter in our everyday lives that can make certain things seem a whole lot clearer.

Perhaps it’s the natural beauty, the otherness, or a combination of the two. But on this Christmas morning, somewhere in the middle of the second verse of “Joy to the World” with a couple dozen strangers in a log-beamed chapel with Lone Peak peeking through the window behind the altar, I felt like I got it in a way I hadn’t in a long time.

See, I go to church for a living and I have a tendency to listen to sermons, choirs, organists, and lecturers much the same way a movie critic watches a new film. This morning started out no differently. Walking into the Big Sky Chapel, I immediately began keeping track of things I liked and disliked. The two ministers (one Lutheran, one Episcopal; one man, one woman) were warm and friendly. I liked that. The fill-in pianist played all the traditional Christmas hymns in a key so high, most people couldn’t sing them without straining their voices like a cat in heat. Thumbs down.

It went on from there, despite conscious efforts to silence my inner critic. But then something happened, something like when the Grinch — on a mountain overlooking Whoville — had his moment of Christmas clarity and his heart grew three sizes.

Alan Alda in the pulpit

The Rev. Darius Larsen, an Evangelical Lutheran pastor who moved from St. Cloud, Minn., to Big Sky only a few months ago and who looks like a bearded, Scandinavian Alan Alda, mounted the simple pine lectern to deliver his Christmas sermon. I’ve heard hundreds of them. This was one of the best.

“God is where God is supposed to be, in our choices, struggles and joys,” Larsen began. “Christmas morning is always an amazing morning. Children never sleep in, but get up early. The best meals of the year are prepared. People smile and are nicer to each other. The white of the newly fallen snow seems whiter. Peacefulness is in the air. It is a morning to listen to the small sounds — of peace and joy, of laughter and expectation. It is a morning after all the rushing, spending, and celebrating to slow down and listen.

“For this morning is different than other mornings. Listen to the music, the air and the children. Listen to the stillness made manifest in a baby being born. God has spoken and the universe, at least for a moment, stood still. This is a holy morning where all is calm and all is bright. The story of that first Christmas . . . is a story of hope, tenderness and love,” the pastor said as snow crystals blew past the simple stained glass windows across the meadow.

Anger over a brother’s gift

Larsen went on to tell one of his own stories, about a magical Christmas when he was 12 years old. After dinner was eaten, the dishes done and cleared away, and all the other presents opened by his family, his older brother disappeared into the garage and returned carrying a giant wrapped box with Larsen’s name on it.

He tore through the wrapping paper and opened the box to find … another wrapped box. This happened 14 more times, until the 12-year-old Larsen stood with a plain manila envelope in his hand, and tears streaming down his face because he thought the huge present was a big joke. He opened the envelope and inside there was a piece of paper.

“I was ready to make the paper into a ball and throw it at my brother, then run from the room never again to return,” the pastor recalled. But then, he saw what the paper said: “I Robert D. Larsen being of sound mind and body hereby give to my brother, Darius I. Larsen, my tree house.”

“I could not believe what I was reading,” Larsen told the Christmas morning congregation. “It wasn’t a little unimportant piece of paper, but a great gift! It wasn’t a tease, but rather the best gift I have ever been given. What had seemed so big and had become so small, was again so big!”

Sitting in that tree house 20 feet in the air between branches of an elder tree in his parents’ backyard on a cold, clear Christmas night in Minnesota all those years ago, Larsen said he understood the meaning of Christmas for the first time.

“What makes a gift great is not the size of the package, but rather a gift is great when it contains part of oneself,” Larsen said. “This is the morning when we have all been given God’s greatest gift, whimsically wrapped in the form of a baby lying in a feed box.”

“Today, the holy family rests in the manger of humanity, and we rest cradled in the promise of hope, and flooded with love’s pure light. Angels dance, animals smile, mountains break into joyful song, trees clap their hands, all creation rejoices, and God smiles.”

Maybe it’s the mountain air, but, even for the briefest of moments, I got it. Now if I could just figure out a way to bottle it and bring it back to Chicago with me.