Tuesday, December 22, 2015

A Christmas Prayer

When I am in Florida in the winters, I attend a weekly group (about 20+) which begins with some Biblical readings, then goes on to discuss thoughts that the reading stimulates.  Our discussions range widely and sometimes become controversial, but we all enjoy them and feel enriched by the varied perspectives.   Last year at the meeting before the Christmas break we had a poem whose author was unknown, the group was awed by it and I now wish to share it.  If anyone recognizes it and can identify the author please let me know, I would love to give him or her credit. 

A Christmas Prayer


On that holy night,
Somehow,
It happened.
Somehow,
God took a handful of humanity:
Proud, petulant, passionate;
And a handful of divinity:
Undivided, inexpressible, incomprehensible:
And enclosed them in one small body.
Somehow, the all too human
Touched the divine,
And was not vaporized.
To be human was never the same,
But forever thereafter,
Carried a hint of its close encounter with the perfect.
And forever thereafter,
God was never the same,
But carried a hint of the passion of the mortal.
If God can lie down in a cattle-trough,
Is any object safe from transformation?
If peasant girls can be mothers to God,
Is any life safe from the invasion of the eternal?
If all this could happen, O God,
What places of darkness on our earth
Are pregnant with light waiting to be born this night?
If all this could happen, O God,
Then you could be, and are, anywhere, everywhere,
Waiting to be born this night in the most
Unbelievable places,
Perhaps even in our own hearts.
Amen









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