My Favorite Christmas Poem

During the holidays, my mother has a lovely way of decorating her home so that you feel as though you're stepping into a fairy wonderland of pure, childish delight.  Her attention to detail, lighting, sparkle, and whimsy greet you at every twist and turn... magical vistas everywhere!  

One of my favorite magic touches is a poem... a poem placed in a beautiful frame that sits on her library table in the living room.   And when I am lucky enough to go home for the holidays, this poem seems to beckon me.  As I walk by it, I feel its energy call out to me, always touching me deeply as if I'm reading it for the first time.  I am awed over and over again by its simple and poignant articulation of how the power of the universe lives the human experience.

The more I understand that we are brilliant, positive universal energy... eternal souls created from the very energy of the universe and thrust into a physical human body, the more I appreciate this poem about Jesus' experience here on earth.    

Mary's Song

Blue homespun and the bend of my breast

keep warm this small hot naked star fallen to my arms.

Rest you who have had so far to come.

Now nearness satisfies the body of God sweetly.

Quiet he lies whose vigour hurled a universe.

He sleeps whose eyelids have not closed before.

His breath so slight it seems no breath at all

once ruffled the dark deeps to sprout a world.

Charmed by dove's voices, the whisper of straw,

he dreams, hearing no music from his other spheres.

Breath, mouth, ears, eyes he is curtailed

who overflowed all skies, all years.

Older than eternity, now he is new.

Now native to earth as I am, nailed to my poor planet,

caught that I might be free,
blind in my womb to know my darkness ended,

brought to this birth for me to be new-born,

and for him to see me mended I must see him torn.

-Patty Shaw

Merry Christmas!

Stacey