Dear friends- may you be gifted with joy and peace.

By way of a Christmas card, I offer a picture, and a poem. The picture is by Janet McKenzie, whose art  inspired this lovely book.

Mary. Mother of God.

Where you born already divine;

A scrap of human flesh with a

God only skin deep?

~

Or did the shape of Messiah-

The mewling lion of Judah-

Need nurture?

~

At the breast of this mother

Scarcely beyond child herself

You took in milk

~

What sort of woman

Might school the star maker?

Whose sharp words

~

Could cut through a

Heavenly tantrum like a

Shaft of light through shadow?

~

Did she teach the turning of

The other cheek against some teenage

Provocation?

~

Or perhaps this was always the point-

Power and might made tender flesh

The highest now most lowly

~

The filling up of hungry mouth

The arms that hold

The pride at a first step

~

The learning and the loving

The pulse of blood in fragile vein

The summer cough

~

From this material

A man was made

Who became Messiah