The old people sing

Haiku of fulfilment

Old people hang out

in churches and in temples;

watching and waiting.

Something might happen.

You never know, it might be

the day God appears.

Righteous and devout,

old Simeon was patient;

he would see the Christ.

His words erupted!

This child, he would be the one;

light and salvation!

The old man blessed them.

It is enough, I’ve seen him

Let me go now, God.

He spoke to Mary.

There will arise much turmoil

on the road to peace.

Anna, the prophet,

saw the child, raised her old voice,

and joined in the song.

Wisdom and insight

come not just with the years,

but with openness.

© Ken Rookes 2017.

a message of love and vulnerability

"We spend a lot of time listening to and singing songs about the greatness of this child that is called the Christ but I wonder how much we understand it. It is not a sort of oohing and ahhing at the cute kid but rather a profound message about the nature of ourselves and the spiritual power of the child.

I guess as we come to this day with the background noise of terrorism threats and the horror of the world news, we wonder about whether this is a hollow celebration full of smultcz. But it isn’t. The message couldn’t be more significant. The message of love and vulnerability that this child is bringing is to transform the world. It is to bring a great light into the darkness. It is to tell that the power of the divine is not in powerful structures or domination but that true power lies in vulnerability and love. This is a message about the great love of God to all of a suffering humanity and so a message of a new hope.  To quote T.S Eliot again - "You bring me news of a door that opens at the end of a corridor, sunlight and singing; when I had felt sure that every corridor only led to another blank wall."

        The way the Bible tells it, the baby worked a kind of magic on the surrounding world on the night of his birth. Here is a new image of this ‘God’ not as an all-powerful God but rather as a helpless, vulnerable infant. The traditional image of ‘God’ is still a powerful, if old man ...not a helpless baby. The magic that surrounded the baby lifted people above the misery, cold and darkness that surrounded them so that all they could think about was the birth of this child.  We can surround ourselves with all sorts of distractions on this wonderful day but if we let ourselves forget the message that we hold the holy deep within us, then we have cheated ourselves of the true meaning of Christmas... Emmanuel - God-with-us! I love the lyric of a song by Sinead O’Connor that says that “All babies are born saying God’s name.”