Birth
I'm here!
Merry Me-mas, my loves!
My gift to you is the last installment of Christmas poems Tania and I wrote for Rabbit Room last year. (Is the poem a gift, or the fact that your inbox is gonna calm down a little? You decide.)
So, in my humble and divine opinion, “Away in a Manger” is up there with “Do They Know It’s Christmas?” and “All I Want for Christmas Is You” as one of the most frustrating Christmas songs.
I am God, but I am human. I did all the baby stuff.
Grace and peace, Beloveds, even when life is noisy.
No crying I make? Of course I screamed with that first shock of air in my lungs. You did your share of wailing, too, the sheep and cows bellowing in a chain reaction that drove Dad to stuff hay in his ears. So many say they want incarnation but don’t really mean it. Any baby halo would have shattered the first time I bit your nipple and you yelped. I see no inflatable placenta or pre-lit pig slop in the Wal-Mart nativity displays. Mother, I know you know I am man and God. You felt the comets streak through your uterus. But most of the others won’t understand or will pretzel themselves out of belief. I’ll love them anyway, painfully, to the point where these spirit -carbon cells might burst. I feel the future as clearly as this damp wind wafting through the cave. Pull me closer, and for the first time, let’s look directly into each other’s faces as the universe swirls and the temple curtain braces to rip. All will be bright in our lives, Ama, but certainly not silent.
Thank you for this.
I pretzel myself out of belief over and over. It used to bother me, but now I know what a huge ask it is, to demand that everyone, even those who just aren't capable, to believe. I have tried all my life, but it doesn't ring true, nothing balances.
Except when I sing a carol and see an angel flying through my open window. And see, quite clearly, the bodies of angels in the sky, their ribs outlined in shuddery clouds.
💛💛💛