Celebration

There is an affinity among these leaves and this sky and these beasts for the flora of the Nativity, the glow of the manger, and the story of the stable…

by Patrick J. Walsh

In the coolness of the evening, in the bright lights of the season, in the tableau with the lamb and the star, the night wind whispers a promise to the broken heart:

He will bring us goodness and light…

Sometimes when I walk in the park, I feel like the shepherd boy, listening, straining to hear the song above the trees, swelled to the bigness of the sea by a chorus of angelic voices:

He will bring us goodness and light…

© Patrick J. Walsh

In the warm embrace of nature, knowing the trees as if by name, I hear the words…

As I walk I wonder if I am doing all I might do to bring goodness to others. I think of the efficiency of earthly monarchs in reaching people everywhere with the message for which I am but the merest conveyance:

He will bring us goodness and light…

And in the warm embrace of nature, knowing the trees as if by name as well as by their botanical lineage, and aware of the animals all around, I hear the words as they echo like gold and silver bells rung on the wind, as precious as peace among men:

He will bring us goodness and light…

In the warmth of the bright summer, the fresh breath of spring, the melancholy whim of fall, and, as now, in the aching grasp of winter sadness, there is an affinity among these leaves and this sky and these beasts for the flora of the Nativity tableau, the perpetual glow of the manger, and the enduring story of the stable and the lowly animals that shared in that long ago celebration of the birth that is renewed in so many lives each December:

The Child, the Child, sleeping in the night

He will bring us goodness and light

He will bring us goodness and light

© Patrick J. Walsh

Anticipation

“The bare branches of the trees cause me 

to think of the straw of the stable…”

By Patrick J. Walsh

There are scant few days left before Christmas, and even fewer before the winter solstice. Time is short for the short days of darkness, and it feels good to anticipate the goodness and light that will arrive with the progress of nature and the promise of the spirit.

My walks in recent days have been littered with “little worries” — items on my “to do” list that are not yet done, for example; or last minute preparations that I have stubbornly refused to let wait until last minute, as though worrying would get them done sooner.

Today there is a fresh, light wind stirring the reedy limbs of some sparse evergreens near the edge of the road. The thin branches wave slightly, as if in greeting, as I walk by.

© Patrick J. Walsh

"...the reedy limbs of some sparse evergreens 

wave slightly, as if in greeting, as I walk by."

In the traditions of my religious faith, this time of year evokes images of a stable, and animals kept for domestic purposes by the keeper of an inn.

Cross-hatched gray across the darkening blue of the sky, the bare branches of the trees that surround the evergreens cause me to think of the straw of the stable, shuffled into rough shapes of nests by the beasts in whatever time they might have had free from their burden.

Not yet touched by the presence of the family that would transform it into a signal site of transformation in the course of human history, the stable was probably typical of the modest accommodation necessary to the upkeep of animals, then and now. And by all accounts of zoology and history, the inhabitants of the stable were likely similar in most details to their modern descendents.

As I walk along the edge of the woodline, I think of the similarities and differences between the animals of the stable and the creatures that inhabit the woods around the park.

They are of course different types of animals; although there are horse paths in the park, the large majority of its inhabitants are common wildlife — squirrels, deer, ducks and geese — that has little in common with any version, ancient or modern, of horse or donkey or oxen.

And yet they are all progeny of the development of nature, and they each play a productive role in the ecology of their time and place.

For those who wish to infer a spirituality in the pattern and direction of their progress, there is a winsome link of familiarity between the meek denizens of the Biblical stable and whatever creatures might be encountered in the modern nexus of metropolis and nature.

Thinking of the straw and the donkey, and the sparse evergreen and the deer, the distance in millennia and the far span of the earth from that time and place to this very spot becomes somehow less distant.

So remote from the straw and the smell and the noise of those long ago animals, yet blessed with the benefits of belief and tradition and history, I move through the park as though on pilgrimage, thinking of the family and the birth and the child that were, at this time so long ago, still on their way toward the stable…

© Patrick J. Walsh

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