Monday, December 15, 2014

Luke 2:1-7

Now it happened that at this time Caesar Augustus issued a decree that a census should be made of the whole inhabited world. This census-- the first -- took place while Quirinius was governor of Syria, and everyone went to be registered, each to his own town. So Joseph set out from the town of Nazareth in Galilee for Judaea, to David's town called Bethlehem, since he was of David's House and line, in order to be registered together with Mary, his betrothed, who was with child. Now it happened that, while they were there, the time came for her to have her child, and she gave birth to a son, her first-born. She wrapped him in swaddling clothes and laid him in a manger because there was no room for them in the living-space.

Awakening

Rough gravel clatters across

The frozen drive as I walk to

The old barn. Most of it is packed

Solid into the Jo Daviess county soil

That saw my birth here as I

Go to another birth, once more, that

Once more, I may be born.

My footfalls, the only noise

in the evening dark, silence broken

by the cold metal snap of the

latch on the warped red door.

Entering, I enter another world,

Filled with the magic that awakens

My heart to what is always waiting

whenever I take this journey, not

of distance but memory.

.

It is the woman I first see, no, it

Is her fear, her eyes, wondering

Whether the snap of the latch brings

Friend or threat. She crouches low

By the last wooden stanchion; the

Cows now loose in the field, having

Been milked. The stanchions

Rough cut brown boards worn smooth

On inside edges by the necks of cows

Scratching an itch or straining to reach

The last blades of hay in this manger

Where now lies another food.

Stacks of hay and straw bales make a

Wall behind her so she cannot run

Or hide in the bales where mice rustle

In the silence. But she does not run.

She must be here Just as certainly as

I must be here, waiting, watching for

The rustle of what moves not among

the bales … but in myself.

She sits, watching me, her head turning

Again and again to the child, so recently

Come from the warmth of her

Womb to this common, rude space no one

Would notice as anything more than

An old barn on a half-forgotten farm

Of no particular importance to anyone,

Except to me because every year I come

here … to see him.

She watches him, the child,

Asleep in the straw who does nothing but

Make new-born sounds and awaken me

Once more to wonder that such a child

Born in such a place should mean everything

To me and a world that needs this moment

More than anything else.

The fear-eyed mother keeping watch over

The wrapped child, warm against the cold,

A more or less pathetic scene with no glory

To suggest God or royalty. Yet my soul

Knows an invitation here that is more than

Invitation because it awakens the

Love and compassion it invites, awaking, too,

Awareness that the compassion awakened

Is exactly the salvation the child is promised

To bring. And he does, just lying there, for

I know … standing there, watching them

The soul who kicked gravel across the lot is

larger now and the hand that threw the latch

more gentle for having seen him once more.

Pr. David L. Miller