A Poem For Christmas Night

Greeted by the multi-lit display draped over the hedges and the railing of our front porch, the brilliant lit Christmas tree winks at us, welcoming us home from the Christmas Eve Mass. You settle comfortably in your chair as I walk into the dining room. Sitting down, I light the lone candle on the table and contemplate its flame, dancing and whirling in the darkened room. The flame draws me into its story. Its bright yellow light thinly framed in blue, speaks to me about many dark places penetrated by its light: caverns and street corners, vast fields and mighty forests, tall buildings and small homes, and the darkest place of all … the human heart. The flame tells the story of a long time ago, of a world enveloped in the darkest of nights. Violence and cruelty, poverty and pestilence heaped upon a brutalized, battered and lost humanity. In a miserable stable, its walls and floor painted in manure and straw, the dark dank smell of wet hay, and its livestock denizens filling the air, there lies in a feed trough a light more brilliant than the dancing flame. The flame of that light dances in the eyes of his homeless parents, his mother who birthed him, and his proud, protective father. The light is reflected in the eyes of the animals shuffling about in their stalls, and in the eyes of the shepherds and the travelers from afar. My gaze, fixed on the flame, widens as I detect other shadowy shapes around the table. I sit in communion with my father and my mother, my sister and my brother, their lives, like others, lived in various degrees of perfection and imperfection, drawn to this light whilst alive, and now in the life beyond, join with me transfixed by the light of the candle. I smile to be once again in their company, and, with a nod and a parting glance their shapes slip back into the shadows of the room. Once more alone with the light, an image forms in my mind, that eternal light birthed in Bethlehem so long ago, which danced in the eyes of Mary and Joseph, in the eyes and hearts of many burdened by the weight of scandal and shame, poverty and despair, which the world was unable to crush and snuff out, this light will always be there to guide and to light me through the dark corners of my life yet to be, to the eternal Christmas awaiting me.