jellema / petersen / rilke / l'engle / Klug | joseph & mary

MARY:
He could squint along forty foot beams
And catch the gentlest wayward drift toward a curve
That no one else saw. His calloused, pitch stained hands
Would tenderly stroke the flush seams of a perfect joint.
We used to see him astride his unwavering rafters,
Tall as the echoing blows of his worshipping arms,
Looking with pride on the loving work of his mitred,
Four square world. He always looked sharply to see
If some sinning board in somebody's house were off square,
And longed to redeem it with the righteous tongue of his plane.

JOSEPH:
She looks at me, pale and ghostly, even
though she stands full in the evening light
outside my shop door. The hammer
in my hand drops to the ground,
she fills me with such terror:
the innocent delight of her eyes gone out,
those gentle hands which she could hold
the world in wring and twist
over her stomach in the folds of her dress,
and the delicately proud line of her body—
where has it gone, stooped as if spent
from a sickness?

ANGEL:
Her eyes drift to the ground
where earth-shaking news takes shape
in the carpet of splintered wood and nails.

JOSEPH: Mary?

MARY: Please listen and hear me out,

JOSEPH: her voice
that has so many times quickened my heart
with the lightness of a star, so heavy now.
Mary, what—
She takes my hand, draws me closer
and places my callused palm
over a bulge in her stomach.
Is it—

MARY: You must believe—

JOSEPH: How did this—

MARY:
--what I need to say…
then do what you will.

JOSEPH:
My face flushes to feel this growing
in her. I try to sit, and stumble
against a pile of boards that fall
in a clattering heap,
repeating the shattering announcement
down the streets, through the open windows
and doors of the torpid town; women and
children passing by glance in bewilderment,
Reuben the blacksmith stops his clanging
three doors down.
I beg her to come inside,
my throat tight, so dry I cannot speak.
I try to think, to bring substance
to the dizzying rush
of incomprehension in my skull.
Your trip south, was it then? I ask,
That you met… that it happened?

MARY: I haven’t slept with anyone.

JOSEPH: Just tell me who.

MARY:
It wasn’t that way.
An angel came to me—

JOSEPH: An angel came to you!

MARY: Joseph…

JOSEPH: Go! Get out!
That night in bed I stare into the dark,
do not sleep, her voice that was not her own,
her words haunting me, my Mary,
visions of her betrayal mocking me:
strange hands in her dark, velvet hair,
her skin so tender against his,
her warm breath
on his face, lips, limbs merging—
Was it awkward, timid?
or yearning and confident?
I try to cry but cannot,
the wound too deep, and burning,
twisting, knotting.

SONG: You've Got To Hide Your Love Away

ANGEL. And the angel, taking due pains, told
the man who clenched his fists:
But can't you see in her robe's every fold
that she is cool as the Lord's morning mists?
But the other, gazing gloomily, just murmured:

JOSEPH. What is it has wrought this change in her?

ANGEL. Then cried the angel to him:
Carpenter, can't you see that God is acting here?
Because you plane the planks, in your pride would
you really make the Lord God answerable
who unpretentiously from the same wood
makes the leaves burst forth, the young buds swell?

JOSEPH. He understood that.

ANGEL. And now as he raised
his frightened glance toward the angel who
was gone already...

GUITAR INSTRUMENTAL: What Child Is This?

MARY:
It was from Joseph first I learned
Of love. Like me he was dismayed.
How easily he could have turned
Me from his house; but, unafraid,
He put me not away from him
(O God sent angel, pray for him).
Thus through his love was Love obeyed.

The Child's first cry came like a bell:
God's Word aloud, God's Word in deed.
The angel spoke: so it befell,
And Joseph with me in my need.
O Child whose father came from heaven,
To you another gift was given,
Your earthly father chosen well.

With Joseph I was always warmed
And cherished. Even in the stable
I knew that I would not be harmed.
And, though above the angels swarmed,
Man's love it was that made me able
To bear God's Love, wild, formidable,
To bear God's Will, through me performed.

JOSEPH:
Sleep now, little one.
I will watch while you and your mother sleep.
I wish I could do more.
This straw is not good enough for you.
Back in Nazareth I'll make a proper bed for you
of seasoned wood, smooth, strong, well‑pegged.
A bed fit for a carpenter's son.

Just wait till we get back to Nazareth.
I'll teach you everything I know.
You'll learn to choose the cedarwood, eucalyptus, and fir.
You'll learn to use the drawshave, ax, and saw.
Your arms will grow strong, your hands rough ‑‑ like these.
You will bear the pungent smell of new wood
and wear shavings and sawdust in your hair.

You'll be a man whose life centers
on hammer and nails and wood.
But for now,
sleep, little Jesus, sleep.

SONG: Golden Slumbers


assembled from excerpts from the following (in order of appearance);
Four-Square, by Roderick Jellema
Joseph's Night Watch, by Karl Petersen
Joseph's Suspicion, by Rainer Maria Rilke
O Sapientia, by Madeleine L'Engle
Joseph's Lullaby, by Ron Klug

David Kossoff, "Seth"

My father and my grandfather were shepherds. It is a thing that runs in families. My sons own their own farms and their own sheep, but that is progress. I always looked after other people's sheep. That was not unusual when I was younger. We were looked down on, I suppose, for often we had to work every day, ignoring the sabbath, and with so many priests among the people, we were often told we were breaking the law. Though where the priests would have got their perfect lambs for sacrifice without us I don't know. They could be very rude the priests especially the young silly ones. It's the same today, and not just with priests: people speak before they think. That's one good thing about looking after sheep: you get into the habit of keeping quiet. If you have to use words, you take your time to get them right. Words are important.

People often tell me that mine was a dull life. Well, maybe. I like to watch the night sky, the moon and the stars. Once I saw, at night, a sight that very few have seen. Just once, but once was enough for any man. If a priest is rude to me, I always say to myself, It doesn't matter. I had that night, and you didn't.

I was about nineteen at the time, and although it's now about fifty years ago, I remember it like yesterday. On this night I'm talking about, we'd met up where we usually did, on the side of quite a big hill. We'd had a bite to eat and drink and were sitting talking. Around us our hundreds of sheep. All normal and usual and quiet. Very restful and quiet, those talks at night. It was a dark night.

Then there was a sort of stillness and a feeling of change, of difference. We all felt it. I had a friend called Simon, and he first noticed what the change was. It was the light. There was a sort of paleness. It was a dark night, but suddenly it wasn't so dark. We began to see each others faces very clearly in a sort of silvery, shimmering light. We seemed surrounded and enclosed in a great glow. It was the purest light I ever saw. The sheep were white as snow. Then as our eyes began to ache with it, just farther up the hill from us the glow seemed to intensify and take shape, and we saw a man. Like us but not like us. Taller, stiller. Though we were still enough, God knows.

He looked at us and we looked at him. We waited for him to speak. It didn't seem right we all felt it for any of us to speak first. He took his time as though to find the right words and then he began to tell us what he called good news of great joy. Of a new born baby, born in David's town. A baby sent by God to save the world, to change things, to make things better. He told us where to go and find the baby and how to recognise him. And to tell other people the good news. His own pleasure in telling us filled us with joy: we shared his pleasure, if you follow me. Then he stopped speaking and became two. Then four, then eight, and in a second there seemed to be a million like him. Right up the hill and on up into the sky. A million. And they sang to us. Glory to God, they sang, And on earth peace to all men. It was wonderful. It came to an end and then they were gone. EVery single one, and we felt lonely and lost.

Then Samuel, who was the eldest of us, said "Come, let us go and find the baby. David's town, the angel said: Bethlehem. In a manger. In swaddling clothes. And off we went. We ran, we sang, we shouted, we were important, we'd been chosen. We were special. We were on a search. We had to find a baby.

And we did find him. We were led there. There was no searching, we were led, and we saw for ourselves. Not much to see, perhaps. A young mother and her husband and a newly born baby. Born in a stable because all the inns were full. Poor people they were. The man was a carpenter.

Well, we did as we'd been told. We spread the word, and people did get excited. But not for long. Nothing lasts. We shepherds were heroes for a while, but then everyone knew the story. It was old news. Soon we were just shepherds again, doing a dull job. But we were different from all the rest: we'd had that night. I don't talk about it much any more, but it keeps me warm. I was there.


by David Kossoff,
from The Book Of Witnesses

Frederick Buechner, "Gabriel"

She struck the angel Gabriel as hardly old enough to have a child at all, let alone this child, but he'd been entrusted with a message to give her, and he gave it. He told her what the child was to be named, and who he was to be, and something about the mystery that was to come upon her. "You mustn't be afraid, Mary," he said.

As he said it, he only hoped she wouldn't notice that beneath the great, golden wings he himself was trembling with fear to think that the whole future of creation hung now on the answer of a girl.

Frederick Buechner, "Emmanuel"

Christmas is not just Mr. Pickwick dancing a reel with the old lady at Dingley Dell or Scrooge waking up the next morning a changed man. It is not just the spirit of giving abroad in the land with a white beard and reindeer. It is not just the most famous birthday of them all and not just the annual reaffirmation of Peace on Earth that it is often reduced to so that people of many faiths or no faith can exchange Christmas cards without a qualm.

On the contrary, if you do not hear in the message of Christmas something that must strike some as blasphemy and others as sheer fantasy, the chances are you have not heard the message for what it is. Emmanuel is the message in a nutshell. Emmanuel, which is Hebrew for "God with us." That's where the problem lies.

The claim that Christianity makes for Christmas is that at a particular time and place "the high and lofty One who inhabits eternity" came to be with us himself. When Quirinius was governor of Syria, in a town called Bethlehem, a child was born who, beyond the power of anyone to account for, was the high and lofty One made low and helpless. The One whom none can look upon and live is delivered in a stable under the soft, indifferent gaze of cattle. The Father of all mercies puts himself at our mercy. Year after year the ancient tale of what happened is told raw, preposterous, holy and year after year the world in some measure stops to listen.

The Word became flesh and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth. A dream as old as time. If it is true, it is the chief of all truths. If it is not true, it is of all truths the one that people would most have be true if they could make it so.

Maybe it is that longing to have it be true that is at the bottom even of the whole vast Christmas industry the tons of cards and presents and fancy food, the plastic figures kneeling on the floodlit lawns of poorly attended churches. The world speaks of holy things in the only language it knows, which is a worldly language.

Emmanuel. We all must decide for ourselves whether it is true. Certainly the grounds on which to dismiss it are not hard to find. Christmas is commercialism. It is a pain in the neck. It is sentimentality.

It is wishful thinking. The shepherds. The star. The three wise men. Make believe.

Yet it is never as easy to get rid of as all this makes it sound. To dismiss Christmas is for most of us to dismiss part of ourselves. It is to dismiss one of the most fragile yet enduring visions of our own childhood and of the child that continues to exist in all of us. The sense of mystery and wonderment. The sense that on this one day each year two plus two adds up not to four but to a million.

What keeps the wild hope of Christmas alive year after year in a world notorious for dashing all hopes is the haunting dream that the child who was born that day may yet be born again even in us.

Emmanuel. Emmanuel.

David Kossoff, "Shem"

I'm not a religious man, you understand, and I didn't have much in the way of an education, but I'm not young and I've travelled a lot and listened a lot and you learn, you know, you learn. I was born in Samaria in the same year that Herod became King. Herod the Great he was called. Well, maybe he was great. He didn't do much for us in Samaria. All right, we are a mixed lot but we are not lepers. Our law is based on the same rules as the rest of Israel. The Law of Moses. One of those Laws is that the children shouldn't suffer for the sins of the fathers. That's a joke. All my life I've suffered for some nonsense generations ago about my people wanting to help in the rebuilding of the Great Temple and being refused because our religion wasn't holy enough. You'd have thought a few extra gods and idols would have made it more religious. And Samaritans are good builders. My family have been joiners and carpenters for a long time. I think that's what first drew me to Joseph.

I'm a journeyman; I work anywhere. My tools are my luggage. When I first met Joseph and his little family in Bethlehem it was the first time I'd ever been there and I've worked all over; Phoenicia, Syria, Parthia, Egypt. Not a big place, Bethlehem. One big inn, a decent synagogue, a meeting hall. Anyway, this inn had been damaged by some sort of religious demonstration. There'd been crowds of people who'd broken things off for souvenirs. A lot of the timber in the stables needed replacing. I heard about it and was taken on. I found a room on the edge of the town. And met Joseph, who lived next door. When he told me he was also a joiner, I told him about the inn and he smiled and said he'd like to help with the repairs. So I put in a word for him and we worked together.

Very quiet man he was. His wife was younger. Her name was Mary. They had a baby boy. Joseph and I worked together for some weeks before I told him I was a Samaritan.
"Oh," he said. "I've never been in Samaria. Will you eat with us this evening?"

One night I got in very late. It was pay night and I like a drink. The street was quiet and dark. As I got ready for bed, Joseph knocked on my door.
"Can you help us?" he said. "We have to leave right away."
We went next door. Mary was packing and the baby was fast asleep in his crib.
"We have been told by God to go down to Egypt. Right away. Tonight. We know nothing of long journeys. Please help us."

I went next door and packed my tools. We were out of the place in an hour. We joined a trade caravan of merchants and we kept to ourselves. If people got too inquisitive I used rough talk and said loudly I was a Samaritan. That got rid of them. Sins of the fathers can be very useful sometimes.

Now you might ask why did I go with them. Well, there was nothing heroic in it. I've moved around working in different places all my life. And Joseph had hardly been out of his town. Also we were both joiners, and carpenters can pick up work anywhere if you know the way. Another thing, as I told you, I'm a Samaritan, which at that time, thirty five years ago, just before Great Herod died, was the same as being a leper nearly. No one had a good word for you. You walked by yourself. Well, Joseph was an orthodox Jew and he accepted me like a brother and so did Mary. Even the baby liked me. I was one of the family. Of course I went with them. I looked after them.

We stayed with no one long, for Joseph and Mary were afraid. My gentle friend, who never raised his voice, was a wanted man. Mad King herod himself was after him. Well, not him so much as the baby. I don't know all the ins and outs of it even now, but somehow or other Joseph and Mary had got an early warning that Herod was going to kill all the baby boys under two in Bethlehem. They were not hysterical people, and when they went I went with with them, but I didn't really believe such a thing would happen. But it did. We heard about it. Mary wept for days, and Joseph was quieter even than usual.

We didn't go deep into Egypt. We stayed this side of the great delta of the Nile and found a little house in a village. There was enough work round about and the village people were used to travellers. Joseph never spoke much. Once, when I said I'd no idea how he knew about the order to kill the babies, he said, "I didn't know. I was told in a dream by an angel of God to leave immediately. My little son was given to Mary by God. I did as I was told." He was quite serious. I made a sort of joke, I remember. I said, "Well, when the angel tells us to go back home, let me know I'm not too fond of Egypt." Joseph laughed.

I forget now exactly how long we lived in the village but one morning I came down and Joseph had the little boy on his knee. Mary was my the stove, Joseph smiled.
"Good morning," he said. "We can go home."
"Another angel?" I said.
"Same one.' said Joseph. "Herod is dead. It is safe now."

Well, it wasn't so safe really. There'd been riots and disturbances and mass executions, so he would not go back to Bethlehem, but farther north to Galilee, where it was more peaceful. He knew Galilee, he came from Nazareth, and that is where we finished up.

I went with them and helped them find a place and get it fixed up, but then I moved on. Nazareth was a very religious, very orthodox place. Joseph fitted in well, me not at all. I was sorry to go. I saw them from time to time. Then I worked in Syria and Cyprus for a long time and lost touch. But I think of that time often.


by David Kossoff
from The Book Of Witnesses

Rudi Krause, "unforeseen"

angels incognito
step from the airplane
unnoticed they ride taxis
into town

they have come
to take over
our daily paper

and we think
they reside
innoculously
in our attics


rudi krause

Rudi Krause, "one way"

minutes before the Son
caught the outgoing
one-way transport to Bethlehem
one of the angels slipped
a receiver into his inner ear

after the shepherds had stumbled
back out into the night
Jesus heard the whispered query:

whatever made you choose
a place like that?

heard, but didn’t hear
he had already forgotten
the language of the angels


rudi krause

Robert Farrar Capon, "Advent"

Advent is the church's annual celebration of the silliness (from selig, which is German for "blessed") of salvation. The whole thing really is a divine lark. God has fudged everything in our favour: without shame or fear we rejoice to behold his appearing. Yes, there is dirt under the divine Deliverer's fingernails. But no, it isn't any different from all the other dirt of history. The main thing is, he's got the package and we've got the trust: Lo, he comes with clouds descending. Alleluia, and three cheers.

What we are watching for is a party. And that party is not just down the street making up its mind when to come to us. It is already hiding in our basement, banging on our steam pipes, and laughing its way up our cellar stairs. The unknown day and hour of its finally bursting into the kitchen and roistering its way through the whole house is not dreadful; it is all part of the divine lark of grace. God is not our mother-in-law, coming to see whether her wedding-present china has been chipped. He is funny Old Uncle with a salami under one arm and a bottle of wine under the other. We do indeed need to watch for him; but only because it would be such a pity to miss all the fun.

by Robert Farrar Capon,
from The Parables of Judgment, Chapter 12

Richard Osler, Advent poems (2006)

She Was Asked
(After Wilde )

In other stories the god comes
himself. Disguised as a shower
of gold, a swan. He takes
without asking. Then
he is gone. Mary was asked.
By an angel. With flowers.
Lilies. Bold, wide open.
Wouldn't anyone be flabbergasted
by such as he was. Preposterous.
Pregnant without intercourse, a son -
of God. Human and eternal. Three
in one. She was the one who
had to choose, blind to the final
outcome. We have always
Known her answer. She did not.

Richard Osler, Advent I, December 3rd 2006

*

Come O Come Emmanuel

Carrying God was she
Overshadowed with joy or dread? Or
Maybe she thought it just a dream.
Even so, she might still have wondered

Or, at least

Calculated the days until
Overcome with obvious signs
Mary remembered everything;
Even her acceptance of impossibility:

Eternal
Mystery living in her.
Mary, mother-child
Aware
Now of what she chose
Under her heart –
Emmanuel – God With Us,
Love, living in darkness.

Richard Osler, Advent II, December 10th 2006

*

Troubled – Luke 1, Verse 29

You hear a voice telling you to risk everything,
even you’re your one carefully constructed life.
Sometimes it is like Mary carrying a promise

someone else has made and it lives inside you
as if it were yours but first you must claim it.
Will you welcome this angel whatever it is

that comes in the dark and talks against
all your thoughtful plans? Will you say ”yes?”
If you do there will be a journey, a difficult one,

a birth surrounded by strangers, and signs.
A baby to be honoured by kings. Such hope
wrapped up in something just that small.

Richard Osler, Advent III, December 17 2006

*

Puer Natus Est
(After Raine)

Power that comes
Undone on
Earth
Revolving round its star.

Newborn
At his mother’s breast
Tugging against eternity
Utterly
Satisfied

Even now, as
Star-maker, star-made within
Time.

Richard Osler, Advent IV, December 24th 2006