But Mary treasured all these words and pondered them in her heart. – Luke 2:19

Treasuries, they say, are filled with gold.
The mansions of the powerful protect the rooms
whose contents build the edifices which enclose them.

A treasury, they tell me, is the due of you, dear child,
a message from the heavens (though it strangely smells of sheep),
and so I lay your well-wrapped form in straw.

An angel spoke to me, he did, and told me not to fear.
I thought his greeting odd, but much odder was his word,
to tell me that I would become the mother of a King.

A mother I’ve become, but what royal babe is so
conceived to summon those suspicious eyes?
They’ve followed me for months, though not to Bethlehem.

A mother I’ve become, as witnessed by my groans and pains,
by midwife, by my worried Joseph, by the ox
whose manger I’ve now stolen for my infant’s bed.

The bloodied rags have vanished, whisked away
by midwife’s hands. I tell you, it is hard to hold
to memories of angels as a child crowns.

They came, then, those poor wanderers of the fields,
abandoning their flocks by night to see a child
in a manger. A child. A Savior. A Messiah King.

They spoke of angels singing in the skies,
they spoke of glory shining all around them, and
they spoke of peace, God’s peace, for all.

In honesty, I’d like to know the reason that
the angels sang to shepherds, not to me, this night,
since Gabriel’s words have faded in this place.

I’d like to hear the angel once again assure me that
the treasury of royalty will be my son’s someday,
that he will grow and thrive and save and rule.

For now I must content myself with angels’ echoes
in the voices of the poor. For now I must content
myself with pondering their words within my heart.

An inn without a room. A stable and a manger.
Angels’ voices echoed. Son, your treasury tonight
contains no gold. Instead, it is your mother’s heart.

A poem/prayer based on Luke 20:1-20, the Revised Common Lectionary Gospel Reading for Year A, the Nativity of the Lord (Proper I).

The image is The Birth of Jesus with Shepherds. JESUS MAFA. The birth of Jesus with shepherds, from Art in the Christian Tradition, a project of the Vanderbilt Divinity Library, Nashville, TN. https://diglib.library.vanderbilt.edu/act-imagelink.pl?RC=48387 [retrieved December 22, 2022]. Original source: http://www.librairie-emmanuel.fr (contact page: https://www.librairie-emmanuel.fr/contact).

Far from a barn in Bethlehem
in miles and in time,
remembering the stories passed
and wondering just how much
was forgot, and how much lost,
of Jesus’ birth that holy night.

Who will recall, in truth,
the circumstances of this year?
For though we think our times
“unprecedented,” it is just
a sign of swift forgetfulness,
a well-established human trait.

The griefs so hard to bear will not
be felt by our descendants, for we
did not recall the sorrows of
our ancestors, nor think to learn
from their successes or their failures to
protect ourselves from ill.

Nor will our children’s children hear
of ti leaves waving gently in the breeze
beyond the window’s Christmas glow.
Why should they? They will have their own
bedazzling sights and sounds at hand,
their own deep scents to breathe.

Now my tree’s glow (in echo of
ohi’a blossoming upon the slopes of
Kilauea) takes on the shades of stone
a-fountaining, a-flowing, and
a-pooling at the mountain peak.
This might be held in memory.

For this becomes a link between
the distant island of Hawai’i and the inn
of Bethlehem, the places where the Earth
grows thin, and from the deepest places
of the planet and the love of God
there flows the light a-glowing bright.

Yes, here we have the breaking-in of grace:
the one builds up the land and rises
from the seas. The other builds up love
and joy and peace, reclaiming souls
from greed and other-disregarding sin.
So come, Lord Jesus! Make the darkness bright.

Make this a holy Christmas.