What can I give Him?
Happy New Year! Thoughts on Epiphany, and the mystery of the disappearing shepherds.
Taking down our tree and decorations at the end of last week, among them were a few from our childhood that my brother and I found clearing out our parents’ garage recently.
Lovely, lovely, lovely, and hard, hard, hard.
Gently removing a thin silver tinsel garland that had once dressed our seventies family tree, I accidentally shredded a few shards, exposing the bare aluminium wire.
Still beautiful in its fragility.
Just as precious.
Curling it up to store away, I thought about all the Christmases that have been reflected in its sparkle.
I came across, too, a pair of intricately sewn patchwork bells my mother made, when her mind was as sharp as the tucks and pleats she’d made in the holly print fabric. I’d wonder at her patience as she sat at her sewing machine at our dining room table, skilfully guiding the needle and turning the fabric as she worked.
This year, I hung the bells on our wardrobe door over the holidays, and smiled every morning when I saw them.
As I said out loud, packing them away, I miss her.
Last Sunday in church, I looked up during the last verse of In The Bleak Midwinter, and caught one of our clergy singing a line like he really meant it.
What can I give Him, poor as I am?
If I were a shepherd, I would bring a lamb—Christina Georgina Rossetti
It was so moving, so deeply personal that it almost felt too private to have witnessed.
I’ve thought off and out about it since: the moment of devout worship, the bewilderment behind the question itself (what could we possibly bring Him, after all?), which is answered in the final line.
Yet what I can I give Him: give my heart.
I love the tradition of the Wise Men’s arrival, at Epiphany, in nativity scenes in churches and (more organised) homes, including my sister’s in Italy. She had to break away from our FaceTime on Friday to put her figures into position, ready for friends coming over for a twelfth night supper.
Meanwhile, this year, our one year old tabby started her own tradition of seeking out, removing and hiding characters from our little nativity set.
Every day, someone else would go missing: “Where’s the Angel Gabriel? Mariiieeee!”.
It was like a liturgically based version of Elf On The Shelf: a lamb turned up in her food bowl. I found a shepherd in my UGGs.
The priest who led the Mass we attended on Friday night reminded us we might like to keep our nativity scenes on display right up to Candlemas (40 days after Christmas Day).
I’m not sure Marie would let us make it that long.
Last summer, I wrote the following on Instagram and I don’t think I’ve ever felt it more strongly than I do right now:
My beautiful mothers.
Both have loved me bravely and fiercely, through the hardest of circumstances: the first, heartbreak and loss, the second through longing and waiting and loving me just as if I’d been born of her body.
Now, as her memory fragments, she forgets that I wasn’t. All she knows is that I am her daughter, and she is my mother.
It has come to that, and that is everything.
And I’ve never loved them both more, with the fiercest, deepest daughter love.
I know that so many friends reading this (perhaps you?) are going through incredibly hard things coming into this new year.
Sending so much love.
I’m really SO glad you’re here, and I’m excited about things to come for the newsletter and all the ways that we might, as Saint Augustine said, “pay attention to those who, by the accidents of time, or place, or circumstances, are brought into closer connection with you”.
Together. Giving our hearts.
I’m reading your beautiful words as I eat my late breakfast or early lunch, whatever you want to call it. It is my first meal of the day as I fast in the mornings. Reading your words brought sustenance to my soul. Truly. I needed words of tenderness about the meaning of so much of what we put up as Christmas decorations which in many cases are really memories of other times, happier times. I think of you closing down your mum’s house and my heart breaks for you. I also want you to know it is a blessing and a gift to do so. You were entrusted to her care long ago. Now she, and all she left behind as her memory leaves her are entrusted to you. You are doing it with such honor, and grace, and beauty. Thank you for taking the time in the midst of all this to write these words. All we ever have to bring to God and to each other is our hearts. Your’s is full of such tenderness and so much love.
I must have missed this beautiful and moving post (as are all of yours). As Sue said, you combine different threads so effortlessly (that’s the effect, anyway!). Your posts are always so well-crafted. The disappearing shepherds tale is hilarious! That Christmas carol is a favourite of too, both the simple, pure tune and heartfelt words.