Rachel Weeping: Christmas and Gaza

Advent eventide, where light shines in the darkness,

The obsidian envelope still cedes to it's piercing amber,

As the ebbing year's wilting calendar heralds the birth--

Yet lullabies falter as trembling voices in thick lament,

In wretched wails of prayers -- receiving no answer,

But the bloody, bloodless cold, the taciturn starkness

of void.

A voice is heard in Ramah,

    weeping and great mourning,

Rachel weeping for her children

    and refusing to be comforted,

    because they are no more.

A Son of Man, heralded by angels, and star charts of mages,

Is born in squalor in the land of promise, a land of violence.

Mary's child survives slaughter,  a refugee in our gospel story,

As horror to neighbours or kin, as infants bloodily dispatched.

Save for angel hymns, for kinfolk weeping -- scathing silence,

As was in the beginning, is now, even to the end of the ages,

Of waiting.

Advent to epiphany -- Emmanuel with us, still shrouded --

In silence. History seems trapped in perpetual ordinary time.

The mercy at hand, in word and water and bread and wine,

And Spirit-peace o'er all wafts through the rent temple veil.

Still, this peaceable anthem is stifled, like the muted chime

Of church bells in war time whose peeling rings are clouded,

In the fury.

Christmas cancelled in Bethlehem,

Rachel weeps for her lost children.

Children weep for lost parents,

As Palestinians Kin,

To every Genome 

Of our lost Humanity, 

Can wait no more.

Advent eventide, where light shines in the darkness,

The obsidian envelope still cedes to it's piercing amber.

A light for revelation to the Gentiles

And a glory for the people of Israel.