The Nativity – John O’Donohue
No man reaches where the moon touches a woman.
Even the moon leaves her when she opens
Deeper into the ripple in her womb
That encircles dark to become flesh and bone.
Someone is coming ashore inside her.
A face deciphers itself from water
And she curves around the gathering wave
Opening to offer the life it craves.
In a corner stall of pilgrim strangers,
She falls and heaves
Holding a tide of tears
A red wire of pain feeds through every vein
Until night unweaves and the child reaches dawn.
Outside each other now, she sees him first.
Flesh of her flesh,
Her dreamt son
Safe on earth.
It must have been about 11 o’clock when I got Rhona into the maternity hospital. Our two older kids had arrived in the world after long labours through the wee small hours, and number three had decided she would keep up the family tradition.
I took Rhona through to the midwives unit and then I had to come back to speak to the wee man on the door because – as always – there were forms to be filled in. Even when you stand on the cusp of something as momentous as the birth of a child, officialdom never sleeps.
I rattled off name, DOB and address but had to smile to myself when he asked “will she be wanting a visit from the Parish Minister”, to which I replied “Aye – in fact, he’s going to be at the birth!”.
And so it began.
Now as a man, I know better than to romanticise when it comes to those agonising hours of a woman’s labour. But let me say this – anyone who’s been present at a birth knows that there is something profound going on in that room. The ancient Celts used to speak of ‘thin places’ – places where the physical and the spiritual realms are so close they merge into one another. Birth is such a place. Maybe Watchnight Service is another.
The Jews have a saying that there are three people present at every birth. The mother, the child and the Spirit of God. In those wee small hours of watching and waiting and encouraging, it felt like I was on holy ground – privileged to be there.
And when our daughter was finally born, she was whisked away for a quick wash, plonked on mum’s breast and cosied in a fresh blanket.
O’Donohue puts it this way, with Mary in mind:
Outside each other now, she sees him first.
Flesh of her flesh,
Her dreamt son
Safe on earth.
And there’s the image I want you to hold in your minds this evening. The archetypal image of mother and newborn child. Some of you have lived it. Some of us have witnessed it. And it might help those who haven’t, to remember that at one time your mother, or maybe some other loving woman, held you in exactly that way.
What’s in that mother’s gaze as she looks? Hope, wonder, delight, a little fear maybe?
Because through her becoming a mother, she knows that her destiny, her happiness is now tied to the fate of that child, for good or for ill. And though, in the natural course of things, the child will grow and learn and mature and finally leave, she will always carry her, or him, in her heart. Sharing their happiness and their hurts if they remain close. Pining for that closeness if they don’t.
Tied destinies. Mother and child. Creator and created.
And what I want you to understand this evening, is that when God looks at the world, it’s with those same eyes. That same gaze.
In creating, he has chosen to tie his destiny to ours, his happiness to ours. He birthed a world, nurtured it and set it free; he gave us space and time in which to grow and mature, always yearning for a free response of love but never manipulating it; never co-ercing it. Never forgetting us, even when we forget him.
God put it this way, through the prophet Isaiah.
Can a mother forget the baby at her breast and have no compassion on the child she has borne? Though she may forget, I will not forget you! See, I have engraved you on the palms of my hands.
Whoever we are, whatever we’ve done, however much we overlook or ignore the call of God on our lives, we are not forgotten. We are etched into God’s memory.
And that’s the image I want you to remember from this evening. The image of mother and child. Creator and created.
Will you let yourself be held and owned and loved by your creator this Christmas? Will you return God’s gaze? Or will you turn your eyes away to lesser things?
Whatever our choice, God has made his. We are not forgotten. He has come to us in Christ. And in words that prefigure the destiny of that child in Mary’s arms, we are engraved on the palms of his hands.
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