Kristyn Getty's Poem

A special reading written for the 100 year anniversary of the Christmas Eve Truce of 1914 is included in this year's Christmas tour. After the reading the choirs sing 'Silent Night'

'The dying embers of winter sun have left the land in frozen darkness 
The smell of snow is in the air
Worn feet shuffle on foreign soil 
Thousands of soldiers with sleepless eyes dreaming of home
Thousands of children with sleepless eyes dreaming of fathers at home
Uneasy minds splintered by fear in the unknown stillness
Idealism fallen with the unburied dead
Disillusionment festering in the trenches

A church bell rings in the distance
Somewhere in the whispering shadows a hidden longing pricks the leathery hearts of war
The memory of light seeps into cold veins
Against the dark a candle is lit
Then another
And another
An uneven string of life winding round the top of the dirt walls

A lullaby breaks free across the battleground.
voices start to move again with the oil of familiar melody
Without the rhythm of gunfire
Dissonant accents singing and curving into harmony as song and breath weave together across the lines
The broken edges of the present reconnecting with past and future
Something greater than the cutthroat ambitions and fears of men begins to thaw these wintered hearts,
that makes them ache,
that makes them calm,
That makes them brave,
That makes them ask
That makes them come

Silent night, Holy night
The first breath of a baby born 2000 years ago cuts across enemy lines
Silent night, holy night
Peace though in conflict, rest though in war, joy though in pain,
Silent night holy night
The courts of Heaven bursting at the eternal seams of the earth like stars in the night sky
Silent night holy night
Reaching to every midnight of the soul, every trench of the human experience, every cry of the childlike heart...
Silent night holy night
The Lord is my Shepherd I shall not want
Even though I walk through the darkest valley, I will fear no evil, for you are with me;
Silent night holy night
The dawning of the new world always growing within the old until full day'

(Kristyn Getty)