We stand before a cattle shed. It is a bridge between nature and the homes, the hostels, the inns we make for our dwellings. Above it rise the heavens, stars twinkling and angels aglow. This humble shelter is a home to fellow creatures adapted to our use and benignly dubbed domesticated. They themselves are a bridge spanning the civilized and the wild. They are of the ancestral line not fallen from grace, but which must too often suffer the beast within us. Within this stable also are shepherds. They are Jews. They are come here startled by a celestial wonder. While anciently the work of shepherd is noble, for David himself tended his father’s sheep, today it is less princely a work. The righteous most members of society look down upon it for here the myriad rituals and purifications cannot be observed. These shepherds may be of the Chosen, but are decidedly not of the best type. Opposite are the Magi, wise, noble, and scholarly men. They are Gentiles. They are here after an arduous journey propelled by their learning and love of inquiry. Between these two groups are Joseph and Mary, simple working-class folk. They are here as the icons of faith, faith in their religion, their God, and in each other. They have survived the trials of an unexpected pregnancy and a contemplated divorce. They themselves have been on a journey, and the child over whom they hover was not this moment expected to arrive. Yet here they are. Here they all are, a most unlikely mix of class and ethnos. They are here surrounding a child, a new-born full of the promise every new life into this world brings. Yet, there is one character in the sacred narrative not here. He cannot be here. He is Herod, the king, the egoist mad with the want of power and the fear of ever loosing it. Such a creature cannot see in this child promise, only threat, for ego despises any challenge to its power, be it merely perceived or real. Ego believes only in itself because it is all it has.
But we have not asked who is this child? Prince of peace we are told. He alone will carry this tale to its end. This prince will come to stand before another king, another Herod descended from the first, and like the first as relentless and ever cunning in his thirst for might. Before him he will have stand this child become a man, bound not only in chains but in presumed fealty. The child will have nothing to say to him. Is there anyone in him the child can address? How does Peace speak to the thirst for power? How does soul speak to ego except to stand silent and await ego to cease for a moment its expectations and excitations?
But that is why we are here—to cease being something of our own making, our own cares and concerns. We are here to stand before a child dubbed Saviour and Joy, the joy of man’s desiring. We are told he is Creativity’s child. He is creation’s voice dwelling in the depths of soul, summoning each to grow in wisdom and graciousness. We stand here and gaze because here is the image of that within us that can have no image. We stand here and look upon divinity in its infancy. We look upon that creative spark that has made us and ever wills to make us loving, forgiving, wise. And we are true to the depths of us to pray: “Amen, so let it be.”
The shepherds go off to their work amazed and praising God. The Magi, who can read the heavens have read also the madness of the king, and so return home under the cover of dark to vanish into their studies. The beasts, having been reined into man’s world, go wheresoever man leads. The angels, always but flashes of celestial light, are gone in a glance. And like so many forced to flee their homes because a potentate mad for power has turned the country into a field of blood, Joseph and Mary with their infant in tow escape into a foreign land.
How go we from this place? The creche before which we stand is a beginning. Who we become as we leave this place is our sacred narrative to weave or to ignore. May we each elect to be like unto that child at its centre, today and each tomorrow being for our wee bit of this world a healer, a saviour, a person ever open to finding the creative response.
To my readers, and to all—a blessed and merry Christmas. Charles Victor