Calling Birds, French Hens and Turtle-Doves

The nine birds your true love gave you on the second, third, and fourth days of Christmas will keep the partridge company if they understand each other’s clucks and calls and coos. This Christmas carol keeps things light as we remind ourselves of Christmas Day as well as the twelve days of Christmastide. The alert and devout liturgical Christians like you, know Christmas brings wonderful news from heaven with the birth of Jesus. We also know the dismal tragic news churns out from human powers.

Jesus brings redemption, and often the human factor brings injury. In the Christian Calendar, let’s look in the days ahead at how December 25-28 roll out these observances: The Nativity of our Lord, Feasts of St. Stephen the Deacon and Martyr, and St. John the Apostle and Evangelist. Also, we note our Dec. 28th observance of the Remembrance of the Holy Innocents of Bethlehem. There are aspects, both glorious and devastating, in these themes. The speech of Stephen recorded in chapters six and seven of Acts are powerful, as is his beautiful courage. The contribution of John to us, his Gospel, three Epistles, and Revelation, are incalculably rich. Obviously, the birth of Jesus brings Christ into the world as our Light dispelling all darkness we shall ever face. The dark side of the days of Christmas shows up in the oppressive Roman taxation that bullies Joseph and Mary into the untimely journey to Bethlehem in the first place. We find also the senseless and heartless deed of Herod—ordering the slaughter of innocents— recorded in Matthew 2:16-18. We also will look at the harsh exiling of John to the island of Patmos, designed to snuff out the flame of his mystic vision, and with the stoning of Stephen, we want to, but we cannot look away.

The Feast of Stephen is Dec. 26th. His story in Acts shows that religious leaders around Jerusalem did not like the effective spread of the word of God ushered in by the seven new deacons of the Way. The deacon Stephen, the Hellenistic Jew, the right arm of the Apostles, is effective indeed. The comeliness of his appearance goes with the attractive courage, selflessness, and love of God he shows. If you spent the whole week looking at it, God would fill you with insights. Passages, Luke 6:7-15, 7:51-60, evoked from me the following lines of free-verse. Too long and unwieldy, but it is what I have to share:

Solid Witness

I was just holding a smooth river rock in my hand.
My palm is still cool from the avocado-shaped stone.
A geologist would know more about this beige-gray rock.
Might say, “Clearly not igneous, looks to be sedimentary.”
I once worked alongside a priest with degrees
in geology and theology, So, she knows literal rock,
as well as figurative Rock of Ages stuff. She would know
Scripture gave us that phrase: along with many psalms,
Isaiah 26:4, speaking of Yahweh in whom is “the everlasting rock.”
Yes, Kris would know, my river rock is old but not infinitely so.
“Earth’s exposed rock,” she might say, “found its Proterozoic
solid state only one and one third billion years ago.”
To rocks, The Rock is eternally senior.
Leave it to the latecomers to make weapons of rocks
Stones sit still unless shaken from their peaceful rest
upon tectonic, crusty plates. Unless erosive forces cut them loose.
Then chucks fall like tears from the faces of cliffs,
tumbling onto rubble below.
Look and you will see ants move small grains about constructively
Look, humans’ cart larger pieces all about, and all about,
sometimes to build-up
sometimes
to bring
down
Always to feel bigger than they are.
We earn our place as resource manipulators of the highest order
Still, we have our moments, finding things
truer than our pumped-up egos.
Take Stephen, as he points to the Chief Cornerstone,
joyfully, and solidly, never wavering.
Those around him could not stand things put so guilelessly—
Neither hint of deception, nor effort of personal gain.
You know, A stone, sitting still upon the ground, lets itself
be pressed against its mother’s cheek,
but can be pulled away, drawn back then hurled to fly as far
as ballistic force allows, until its flight is interrupted
by gravity’s pull and air’s friction, or until it strikes another mass.
If the interrupting object is human, pain shoots, damage is done,
capillaries burst, skin and tissue splits, and bones crack.
Men listening to Stephen had thought, his face was that
of an angel, but they heard spelled out more than they could stand,
so they halted his speech abruptly: rushing, they nabbed him,
taking him beyond the city-line.
How hard must their faces have looked?
Ugly as mine when I gnash my teeth, when my jaw is tense
with symmetrical clenching, Rock hard muscles ball-up on both sides.
How is my mouth shaped when rage and disdain take me?
How is my brow sculpted around my sockets.
and what fire shows in my eyes?
On the city’s edge men lifted stones, launching,
striking Stephen, the angel-faced deacon
They could not let a man with so warm a heart
speak on with the hard truth.
They quieted him with the work of their own hearts, cold as slate
A few words more he managed,
requesting that Jesus receive his spirit.
He then garnered all the power his soul had left,
and from his knees, from his gut, he heaved heavenward,
as a stone is hurled, a final prayer:
intercession on their behalf—“Hold not their sin against them!”
Then finally, quiet.
Not older than stone, but older than anger
the good was breathed into our clay.
A garden of harmony the Creator intends.
Astoundingly, we find, from time to time, souls still taking
nourishment from the proper fruit of that good garden,
from the hand of the one lifted down from the tree,
the one who received Stephen’s spirit so lovingly that day.

—DWP+ | Dec. 2020