The birth of love

When is the time for love to be born?

The inn is full on the planet earth,

And by a comet the sky is torn—

Yet Love still takes the risk of birth.

                        Madeline L’Engle

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The Christmas seasons asks us to embrace such foolishness and paradox

and a most unlikely cast of characters

I wonder indeed, if in this time

The divine synergy of Christmas would be allowed to emerge

That coming together of such disparate and strange elements

Perhaps Joseph would have been arrested for trafficking

As he attempted to transport that poor, pregnant child

Across a state line.

Perhaps they never would have made it to the city

Their Ford Escort stalled by the side of the freeway

Perhaps the manger would have been a dumpster instead of a barn

with the child nestled among cardboard

And half eaten Big Macs.

His birthplace illuminated by blinking neon

Or the flashing lights of a police cruiser.

Perhaps those gathered to see this thing which had come to pass,

And embrace the hope would be the outcasts

The homeless, ragged, dirty hungry ones

male, female, black, white, all

Sober, drunk, high

Young black men, looking over their shoulders for the police

White bearded veterans, their Vietnam caps pulled low over tired faces

People struggling with depression or psychosis, moving slowly

Over medicated, under medicated, hopeless and afraid

Immigrants, fearful

All

Drawn to this place by something

Tugging at their hearts

Only to be dispersed by the wail of a siren

Shattering the stillness

And overshadowing

The wail of frail humanity

Perhaps the magi would not only be late

But never show, arrested by ICE and

Detained in an INS camp

Or trapped on the other side of a wall

Perhaps the innocents would still die

Not by violence, but by neglect

The services they needed to live cut by

Legislators more concerned with power and wealth and ideology

Than with people

And yet, it seems

 the Sacred has a way of being born

In all times

And in all places

And in all people

Even here

Even now

no matter how hard we might try

We cannot keep

The sacred from being birthed