I recently came across one of my favorite Christmas poems, a poem by May Sarton, that speaks of our journey, yet again, to Bethlehem.
Indeed, we have made this journey before – last year - every year. Whether we are fully aware of it or not, we come with our hopes and our fears, our joys and our sorrows, our expectations for the future and our anxieties about our present.
This year, in particular, we have anxieties about our future. The hate speech; the misogynistic attitudes; the building of walls between people, walls both real and psychological; the prospect of our planet being plundered even more; and on and on; these anxieties surround us.
In our search for what to do and how to respond, we are inexplicably drawn to Bethlehem’s manger. We have learned some things in our previous journeys. We have. But the exigencies of this new year create a special urgency for us to learn more: more about doing mercy, loving justice, and walking humbly with our God. The babe in the manger, in his adulthood, taught us how to engage in such practices. So we make the journey yet again to where it all began.
We journey together or, perhaps alone. Together is better, but no matter, it’s the same road. Some may be farther along than others. Wendell Berry, the philosopher/farmer, says that it does not really matter where you are on the journey (and he speaks primarily of our commitment to the environment, but it relates to other things as well), as long as your arrow is pointing in the right direction. Ours is toward Bethlehem.
May Sarton says it well:
Yes, sick at heart,
Plagued, lost as we are,
Let us make the hard journey.
Who can be sure?
But perhaps if we go there,
It will happen again,
It will happen to us,An infant to be born again
Out of blood and filthy straw.
How naked, how vulnerable,
How desperate in need
This breath between past and future!
The infant Hope.
Oh, shall we kneel again at last
In the healing hosanna
Of Silence?
Yes, let us make the journey.
Perhaps it will happen again.
Come, friends, let us make the journey to Bethlehem, yet again, to kneel in “the healing hosanna of silence.”