Nativity
Forget your Christmas cards and little creche
the cutesy donkey, sheep and shepherd boys.
Put away the twinkle lights and all that trash;
the candy, carols, cards and tacky toys.
For there in your safe familiar manger
lies something that should shock and terrify—
a mewling, interstellar stranger,
an undercover agent—infant spy.
He promises to turn every table
and become an unrelenting master.
making the satisfied world unstable
and lashing the complacent with disaster.
Here shivers something unpredictable—
divine but defined, swaddled yet wild.
Here is something tender and terrible—
a feisty girl and her dangerous child.
Fr Dwight Longenecker is a parish priest, blogger, author, playwright and poet. Follow him at dwightlongenecker.com
