Advent Poem

By the Rev. Cathy J. Gray

If I were Mary, 
I’d say this to my new-born son:

There
in a make-believe cradle
bathed in starlight and sweet hay,
there you are - 
glory unwound to earthly thread,
arm’s reach, vast as the universe,       
now measured in inches, changed as easily 
as night opens way for dawn. 
There, warmed by the breath of a cow,
is God. 
You.     My Baby. 
Blinking, wondering. 
Worried, 
waiting to know who 
you have become;
you’re this...
tiny, squirming, wet, cold,
shivering against 
the strangeness of it all. 

But I 
I saw the stars one day -
captive on burnished angel’s wings -
their spiral dance earthward,
gravity 
formed of fiery gyration -
spinning to atoms of love and light,
making spine and hand and heart...
I felt the universe 
sliding through me, bursting the 
bounds of heaven and earth

I saw the dancing stars,
saw your pirouettes and jete’s 
I watched 
as you were formed in my flesh, 
as you became a bit of my being. 
I know you,
fully as I know my own heart. 

Little one, you’re the visitor now. 
No star-sparked angel wing, 
feathering my morning.
This time, you - all bone and soft flesh,
dimpled hands and ancient-wisdom eyes - 
here, here
seeking milk and a warm blanket. 

Stranger,
tangled in heartstrings,
here for a while -
among us, with us, for us,
in us, as us. As us...
God. Wearing my own mortality,
crying my own fears,
warming my own heart. 

Sleep, then, little one. 
My tiny drop of God, grasping human form, 
weary now from traveling through
infinite space, 
tired from skipping 
across meteors, like 
any another child 
skips stones across a pond.

Sleep and dream your journey,
dream your journey and 
drift again through the stars.
Remember that - now -
you are dust,
... stardust gathered,
miracle among miracles, 
created among God’s creatures,

Come, now. 
I will be your cradle.  
Your milk. 
The weaver of your dreams
and the blanket to enfold your sleep. 
I will be mama. You will be Jesus. 
Nothing more
Nothing less. 

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