Christmass 25/12.
“Dooga Dooga Dooo”
During Advent we have used the theme ‘The Faces She Saw’ and so we have been thinking about some of the faces that Mother Mary saw. The Angel Gabrielle, St. Joseph, The Innkeeper and The Shepherds. Today we come to another face. His face. The face of her son. And I wonder what that moment must have been like the first time Our Lady saw her son’s face.
From the perspective of a midwife, Bishop Stephen Cottrell speculates that it might have been like this.
“I sat with her. I held her hand. I wiped her brow. I told her stories of my own seven births. I felt between her legs to judge whether she was ready or not. After a few hours, my husband came out. ‘What pretty sight is this?’ he muttered angrily. ‘there are customers to be looked after and dishes to wash, you know.’ then he stomped back inside.
Her husband – Joseph, I gathered his name was – paced. He was what you might call a traditional father. He didn’t do anything. He just kept muttering – or was he praying? – that all this was from God and was safe with God.
‘Well, you’re safe with me,’ I told him. ‘now hold this cloth, and wipe her face when I tell you.’
In the darkest hour of the night, I suppose about two or three o’clock, the baby’s head appeared. He stared, blinking and gawping at the world for what seemed an age. And she was crying out with the pain of it, and the great longing for the baby to be free. It was one of those strange halfway moments between the womb and the world, between what was and what is. then with the next contraction, on a spasm of pain and joy, he was born.
I pulled him free and held him up for his mother to behold: a boy, all green and grey with the mucus of the womb and the effort of birth. I didn’t need to spank him or pat his little back. the breath seemed to rush into him, and he filled his lungs and let out a loud, piercing cry. I laughed at him. ‘Loud enough to wake the dead,’ I said to his mother, ‘or at least my sleeping tenants. He’s a strong little fella.’
I laid him on his mother’s breast. That was a beautiful moment. It always is. tender. As old as the world itself. As new as the dawn. And she moved his little face to her breast, and he suckled there, and she held him and stroked his head.”
You see how incisively Bishop Stephen captures that twinkling when Mother Mary sees the face of her child for the very first time. The intimacy, the tenderness, the love, which is so powerful and so tremendous that our cloudy language, our flimsy vocabulary dare not, cannot contain it. Our futile words can only make rash guesses, fallible attempts, half-truths. Adequacy and encapsulation are never going to happen.
“Dooga Dooga Dooo” comes just as close to describing this moment as “How stupendous”.
What is it about the face of a newborn child?
In part, it is the fresh hope that has come into the world. Here is a new life with no mistakes in it. Maybe, just maybe, through the tortuous and joyous life that is about to unfold, a new world, a better world may become a reality, especially when in our honesty we should admit that we have not left this world the place we had hoped for.
What is it about the face of a newborn child?
As parents, we glimpse something of ourselves. Through this infant, we shall leave a tiny imprint on this planet, All is not lost. Part of us, if only through our DNA, will live on even after we have drawn our last breath, just as surely as this child has taken their first breath.
Our Lady may have sensed all of this or none of it. When we are told ‘she pondered all these things in her heart’ the ‘things’ are not explained and expounded for us. Our imaginations are left to run amuck.
In that first moment when Mother sees the face of her child, a threshold is crossed and we can never go back to the way it was. You can’t put a child back into the womb and somehow reverse a birth. And when we see that face we are changed. Even our language is different. You see it yourselves and you’ve probably done it yourselves. In the googly mess of exploding waves of joy, child speak is the only appropriate language. We are made children again. Gibbering idiots, wanting to reclaim our innocence and naivety. We know that as a child we can trust and love and skip and giggle and burble. ‘Unless you turn and become like little children.’
‘Dooga dooga Dooo’ becomes our new/old mantra.
Goodness knows what we will say when we see Mother Mary’s face. Or what we will say when we see His face; especially when we discover He is looking at our face.
Dooga Googa Dooo
The art of letter writing
Some of us will have written and received Christmass cards this year. Often people will write a little letter to include with the card letting the recipient know what has been going on over the last 12 months. While I joyfully receive any card, it is the ones with an epistle inside that gives me a special joy.
Letters make us pause and imagine the lives behind the letters and the circumstances of their origin. They help deepen our understanding of these inspiring artefacts of the human condition. They are windows into the love, beauty, pain, and humour of their creators and recipients.
And these are not the only types of letters we write. Letters of complaint, job applications, thank you letters, letters requesting changes or making suggestions — the list goes on and on.
But the thing that really moves me when I receive a written letter or card is that at some level I am aware that the sender actually sat down and physically wrote this letter. Their hands touched the card I am now holding. The words on the page are in their own handwriting. They moved the pen over this card, they sealed the envelope and posted it by hand. And no matter the content, no matter how glib or trite or illegible the writing, there is a very real sense in which the sender has offered me a small part of themselves. A glimpse into their life and a physical, tangible, rereadable artefact of themselves.
Emails may connect us in a shiny, slick way but there is something more heartfelt and beautiful in a written card or letter than words on a screen. Maybe in a world that has failed to connect, we might rediscover the art of letter writing which can connect us all.