Light from light

It's Christmas Eve and I'm sitting in our back room, awash with light from the low winter sun. The creche sits on the window ledge, the Magi still in the midst of their long journey, ways deep and weather sharp.^* Mary is brought to her knees in labor, Joseph is holding aloft his lantern — looking, I think, for the midwife the innkeeper promised to send.  The shepherd's attention is still on his sheep, one slung over his shoulder while he looks at a newborn nuzzling his mother for milk.  The angels lay sprawled in the greens, resting up for their big night.  Light from Light.

The children are just stirring behind me, the floor creaks as they ease from bed into the shower, old enough now to drive a car.  Unimaginable that these are the same sons who I once held in my arms, held within my very self.   Unimaginable that this child Mary is struggling to bring to birth — that we still struggle to bring into the world — is God from God. 

My own sons' cells still course through my veins. Mary, I want to say, this child will never leave you, not even until the end of time. "To that which you are," Augustine says, "you answer: 'Amen'"  Consubstantial, one in Being.

To which I say, "Amen."

---

*From Eliot's Journey of the Magi; listen to it here.

Looking for more light?  Read Robin's light-infused, tender Christmas Eve sermon, which redeems even physics for the equation averse.

Or ponder Chris Satullo of WHYY reflection on the meaning of Christmas here.