Christmas
Eve: Unexpected Perspectives
on the Holy Night
by
Alan Gregory
The
village streets were narrow, the houses close, in the shadows, they
looked hunched up as if braced for the cold. The two angels trudged
on, their boots crunching the snow.
Turning
into a small square, the talkative one noticed the echo on the sharp
air in the still night. "Oi! Celestial visitation!" he
yelled. His voice bounced along the walls.
"Stop
mucking about," someone hissed back. Another figure, also bald-headed
and in white overalls, stepped out of the shadows.
"That'
s enough," he said, "you' re late."
"Ah,
yes, sorry, we missed the, how you say, 'designated landing site.'"
"You
missed it? How could you miss it?" the archangel Gabriel looked
perplexed.
"Well,
it' s a small planet!" the angel tried to look pathetic, "we'
ve walked miles. You know how it is, once you land, it' s hard to
get off again. Bit of a bugger—gravity."
"Oh
come along!" the archangel gave up the argument. "I've
sent the rest of the lads over there," he pointed at some hills
beyond the village. In the sky, there were vivid, careening dots
of brightness, dozens of bald heads flashing like starbursts. "That'
s the best bit of celestial neon since the creation," Gabriel
shook his head, "all for a bunch of shepherds, hardly the quality
is it? And now I' m stuck with you two. Come on—and do try
and look holy."
They
followed him round the back of a squat, crumbling house, through
the shadows, and, slipping slightly on the ice, squeezed themselves
through a gap in a fence and into the back of a small stable. A
man and a woman were slumped against a bale of hay. They huddled
together, a blanket stretched thinly over their shoulders. In the
women' s arms, tight against her breast was a child. Unheard,
invisible, the angels stamped their feet, shaking off the snow.
"When
I get back up top, I going to stuff a cherub up me shirt."
"That'
ll be popular," said Gabriel.
"Well,
what good are they, anyway. Fluttering about, basking in the glory
while we' re down here freezing our... " he stopped. "I
suppose we are meant to be here?"
"We'
re here because he is, " said Gabriel, pointing to the baby.
The
shivering angel blew another halo of freezing air, and looked over
at the child, snuggling on the breast. "So," he thought,
" heaven' s fire falls this far."The mother held the child'
s feet, rubbing away the cold. He wriggled and a jet of warm milk
squirted on his cheek. The father bent over the little head, breathing
on the small crown. "This is the way the world' s warmed,"
thought the angel, "blood to blood, breast to mouth, love to
longing." And it seemed to him that the man, and the girl,
and the child, glowed like an orb of fire, turning the dull straw
golden, and reddening the drab shelter. Outside, he could hear the
ice, cracking.
"There
is One coming ...[who] will baptize you with Holy Spirit and with
fire."
The
last Ice Age drew to its close about 20,000 years ago. It had covered
much of the earth in a crust of cold, in places 2 miles deep. The
end was very slow. In this part of the world, the Wisconsinian ice
sheet only began to melt after a further 10,000 years, drawing back,
slowly, foot by foot, with a truly glacial reluctance. Human beings—homo
sapiens, at least—came out of the cold as the ice melted,
moving southwards in Africa and, now in greater numbers, following
their prey from Asia into Europe. They multiplied and journeyed,
spreading further, extending their skills, improving the precarious
comforts of poor shelter for their short lives.
As
the Spirit of God warmed the spaces from the retreating ice, it
was clear that humanity was here to stay, that we would have our
dominion. We are creatures of the fourth interglacial period. We
exist only in the retreat of ice. Of course, one day, long into
the future, it will freeze again. This much is certain, one day
the sun will grow dim and the cold will be irreversible. In the
meantime, the question of humanity remains an issue of fire.
From
the beginning, there' s been a strangeness in fire, an element half-here,
half stretching to heaven, something mysterious: offering, with
the authority of a bright god, a way out of the cold. The heat reaches
into your bones, cradles you in your chills and sickness, transforms
your food, shapes tools, works metal. Dangerous, too, fire scorches,
gets out of hand, fierce, uncontrollable, it rages. And always,
with the cold put outside like a dog, men and women have stared
into the flames, and seen visions. It has kindled desire, as if
from another world. Which is why it is a metaphor of the Most High,
who draws near in the blazing tree, and who says " I will baptize
you in fire, I will have you in flames."
Ten
percent of the earth is still under the ice. In the landscape of
the human spirit, the percentage is rather more. We
have never fully come out of the cold. Our longing,
warmed in the fire, our desire, enkindled in the struggles for life,
is still all too chilly, a sluggish desire, half-frozen. We make
peace with the cold, our love warms the world only enough to make
a warmth worth hoarding. We turn others into fuel and our desire,
ablaze with private satisfactions, builds a frosty kingdom. We are
only a little way out of the ice and, therefore, only a little way
from hell. Truth is, it' s been a cold day in hell from the beginning:
folk fixed in frozen gestures, fists raised, envious glares stuck
fast in faces, frosted scowls, bodies shivering in tongues of ice
as sharp as razors. That' s the fate of love chilled around our
own selves.
There
is a different way, however. There is also the way of fire which
is the way of the baby wrapped tight, clutching at the breast, the
girl rubbing his small feet, and the man warming with his breath,
the child' s face. Here, in this stable, is the gift of fire. The
gentleness of God calling out warm affection, the encircling arms,
milk and breath, the blood pumping faster in delight, desire aching,
forgetting everything but that this child must live.
And
we, at Christmas, turned by imagination and the season, gaze at
this catching flame, this hearth of God, and we wonder and long.
Our worship is the desire,
the reckless and incendiary love that the Spirit lights in us as
we crowd round this heavenly fire with shepherds and kings and a
whole communion of saints. Thus, we are baptized
with fire, with a longing in which our self-concern, our narrow
and timid satisfactions, our anxious common sense is slowly burned
away. Thus, we are baptized with fire, a love that has no horizon
save the eternity of God. We begin sputtering into life, our ending
is to be all flame.
Copyright
©2004 Alan Gregory
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