the kinswoman’s story

They arrived in the baking heat of noon, Mary drooping and Joseph frantic with worry over her  They knocked at our door because we were their nearest kin in the town.  Our home was already bursting at the seams, but we wanted to show our best hospitality, and we put them in the only space we had left – the work room which was set a step above the space for the animals to be gathered at night.

As she recovered, we got to know them.  Mary was so intense, so focused; clever, witty, quick thinking, impulsive.

But it is Joseph who sticks most in my mind.  Joseph was quiet, steady, endlessly patient, both with his wife and the baby.  The quietness hid a huge depth of love.  I’ve never seen a young father more passionately intense about his son.  I remember him talking deep into the night, while Mary slept, as I rocked the child to keep him from waking his mother.

‘I will teach him all I know of building.  Of corner stones, and key stones, and of earth turned to rock by the sun.  How to fit door frames and to build hinges.  How to craft wood, and to smooth it to a satin.  I will show him the places I played as a child, and the shady nooks, and the cold vast skies of night.  I will teach him how to skim a stone, and make a whistle or a flute,’ said Joseph, ‘but I want more for this child.  I will teach all I know of the Law – and then find him good teachers for the rest.’  I thought he would teach the child a more valuable lesson.  I thought he would teach how deep a father could love.

Elizabeth’s Story

All the long years of pitying glances rolled away in the glory of this conception. There was an absolute rightness in it. The angel appearing in the holy Temple, in the right place, and at the sacred time. The promise of the holiness of the child.

God had indeed remembered his promises, his old ways of working. I dreamed of a future for this child. He would restore the ancient purity of ways, the law strictly observed, and Israel called back to the true pure path. The comparison which I could not help making was between my husband and myself and the greatest of all our ancestors, Abraham and Sarah. We had always tried so hard to live holy lives, Zechariah and I – and now we were to be rewarded. And yes, Zechariah had, to some degree made a bit of a mess of it, but he had surely be forgiven, or my belly would not have been swelling with a baby.

Conceived like this, my child would surely be – well, he HAD to be the long awaited Messiah, didn’t he? As great and greater than Elijah, Moses, Isaac, Israel himself.

So great was my joy that I was generous when word reached me that my young cousin Mary was – well, that she had- well, Mary came to stay for a little.

She stood in the doorway. My heart seemed to stop still. My baby leapt in me like a fish breaking water. Every certainty stood on its head. Purity was swallowed in love. Repentance was engulfed by forgiveness. The reward of virtue went down before the glory of self offering. What I was, what my child was, that too went down. Now, what had been first would be last. And she, who by rights would have been last, she was the first. Impurity had become healing, rebirth.

My child? What could I and he do but spread ourselves out in the service of she and hers.

‘Who am I to see the mother of my Master?’ I cried. Every certainty was lost in a huge hope.

Gabriel’s story

The two great spheres of time and eternity touched and I leapt across. I had made myself as small as I could, fitting myself into a shape as unalarming as I could manage, until the whole of my spirit cried out in pain at its restriction.
Standing before her, I spoke at once, saying: ‘I am honoured, God-chosen.’ and I saw the fear in her eyes. I saw ahead through her sphere, and I knew the terrible path she was agreeing to. I saw through eternity. The slight, indomitable figure, the childish confidence of faith, and the parched  agonized end and beyond. The choice made with a whole heart, and the choice made again and again as the cost and the pain mounted.
She made to reverence the glory of my reduced frame.  I knelt before her.

End game?

 

I’m tired now. My body aches, and I feel at least seventy years old, and it’s late. My breasts are too hot, and my feet are too cold, and I can clearly remember everything that ever went wrong in my life. There is a whisper that all that lies ahead is misery.

When this started, at first, I was wrapped up in a golden glow. Everything seemed possible. Every wrong could be righted, and I thought with joy of the struggle to climb ever nearer and near the true fullness of life. The impossible was merely in invigorating challenge; the hungry fed, the little people come to their own.

And now it is night, and I ache, and even the perfectly possible seems too much of a struggle. Somewhere a voice is whispering that I have chosen a path which will break my heart. A voice is whispering I should turn back, as far as I can.

So what do the whispers think I am? All right, I’m tired, I’m down, and maybe I will never see what I dreamt of come true. But I tell you now that I’m getting up, and going on and seeing this through. Come on, give me a hand.

The flocks

 

 

So, this bloke, this townie, says: ‘and how did you know they were your two ewes when you found them in old Sam’s flock?’  Well, you can’t say what springs to mind can you?  I mean he wasn’t to know better, I suppose, and ‘how do you find your bum with both hands?’ well,  it wasn’t going to help.  So I just said: ‘Well each sheep is different, isn’t it?  Each face?  And the body and the way the tail hangs.  But more than that, they didn’t look right at home in Sam’s flock – and of course when I called, they looked straight up and at me.’

Well, of course they did.  My sheep. 

Awkward little sods, sheep.  If they do go missing it is always in vile weather – too hot, too cold, the first really wet day for months.  And then they are always looking for an opportunity to die – get stuck, get tangled up, hurl themselves of a bit of rock,  anything will do.  And then they are always needing something – feet sorted, wool off, fed, something.  Endless ruddy work. 

But just call, and they will follow.  My sheep just follow me.  The hardest thing I need to do, each year, is to decide which animals go for cull.  Each year, we breed a few more than we need.  For the good of the flock, you need to pick out which are to go – to die.  Sacrificed, you might say.  One or two actually are, of course, sacrificed.  But each one that goes, it’s a sacrifice to make the rest stronger, healthier.  Poor ruddy sheep.

Wisedom

The sun is bleeding to death behind the mountains, but I am walking from it. Ahead, in the dark sky to the east, there is a star, first among equals.

When I began this journey, I was full of certainty; burdened by a sense of who I was, what I sought. I’ve travelled a long way since then, and the beauty of the half light has sunk into me. Listen, the harsh joyful cry of the heron. Look, seed heads of the dying plantain. I have learned to walk when I was too tired to sit upright, to welcome a bed neither clean nor soft. Harder than that, I learned to give away what I felt I myself needed to those who had more than me. I found I there was little I needed, and much they did..

I used to fear the dark of true night, when the moon herself is put out. Now the path itself has taken hold of me. Seeing or not seeing, it is always there.

The end? Yes, I walk and hope. There will be an end. I had thought of it as judgement, as praise and punishment. I had thought of it as glory and rejection. Now I think I would like to hold a child in my arms. At the end, a child to cradle and to cradle me.