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Good Morning, We currently have an Israeli, Palestinian Christian from Bethlehem in our house. He and his family have been working for reconciliation between Israelis and Palestinians for over 30 years. Even now, in the midst of war’s deafening rage, he dares to speak of peace. Talking to a group of us, he suggests the roots of this conflict are not that hard to understand. What is hard to understand are the layers of competing narratives that have formed around it, and then trying to discern where the truth lies. Every history is a narrative, often melding facts with poetry and outright propaganda. And Israelis and Palestinians have powerful, competing narratives. Reconciliation sometimes requires the deconstruction of these narratives, even if the process challenges the way people understand themselves. ‘So what is the answer?’ someone asked him. On this he was clear: ‘whatever political solution is pursued, we have to take the path through the difficult terrain of understanding our story and the story of the one to whom we must be reconciled. Without this, there is no lasting peace.’ Later, as we walk to our local carol service, we both note how strange it is that here I am with a man from Bethlehem, walking to a church in London, to celebrate an event that occurred some 2000 miles and 2000 years away – the birth of a Jew in a province later named Palestine. But what better place to practise deconstructing a narrative in which we are both heavily invested, and one in which we have both placed our identity and hopes - than a carol service. For the nativity is as messy a mulch of history, poetry and propaganda as you could find. In the church the lights are switched off and the candles are lit. As the light slowly overcomes the darkness, it is possible to see between the layers of the nativity’s fluffy narrative. The luminous hard brilliance of something true and important is being announced: We are given the startling, cosmic promise of Isaiah’s ‘Prince of Peace’ of whose government there will be no end. And then we sing a carol which contains this unexpectedly tough prophecy: ‘…man, at war with man, hears not the love-song which they bring: hush the noise, men of strife, and hear the angels sing.’ After the service, encouraged and a little mulled, I suggested to my friend that The Prince of Peace still has his work cut out. He hadn’t managed to stop the fighting yet. My friend replied that just stopping the fighting was not enough for God, but it would be a start. The Christmas love-song is a narrative of serious reconciliation – in Arabic, Musalaha, or, in Hebrew, peyus. And the peace that emerges from this continuing story is something we are all being called to participate in. This is the history we are being invited to make.