Christmas, like life, rarely brings us what we once wanted or imagined we needed. No doubt that explains why so many products of consumer capitalism’s holiday season create and feed a relentless craving for “the best Christmas ever,” a sales campaign designed to insure that, in the words of a song by Over the Rhine, “all I get for Christmas is blue.” Recognizing the chasm between what I thought I wanted and what I truly need is an essential lesson on the regret-laden road to spiritual maturity. Here’s a poem for those on the way.
Samuel in Bethlehem
(1 Samuel 16)
Over the brow, the lid, the lash,
spiced oil swam. He winced,
and I was glad, sick already of eyes
lovely and vacant as the sky,
sick of this repellant clan,
cowering like beaten dogs,
stammering: Do you come in peace?
Had the Lord’s judgment been mine,
I’d have blasted the lot.
Perhaps not all of them –
consider Eliab: I might learn
to forgive his relations were he…
No. I’ve had enough of kings;
from the beginning regretted them,
my people, inconstant,
punished with answered prayers,
worthless rulers: after Saul, what —
a dirt-streaked boy who stinks of sheep?
I know Israel’s envy:
other nations’ heavenly princes,
fish-headed gods, festivals of blood.
I, too, long to be stirred,
crave security near death,
tire of worshipping the formless.
I shall go to Ramah and weep
that our angered Lord mocks us so:
a king in the body of a child.
From: Flesh Becomes Word by Brian Volck, Dos Madres Press, 2013.
Image: The Tragedy, Pablo Picasso, 1903.