Back to the Manger (December, 2009)

Back, again to the manger
Back from golden crucifixes.
I saw one on TV just this week.
A relic of conquest.
Aztec gold stolen
from religious shrines,
no doubt built
on the blood of conquered
peasants, and captured slaves,
now melted into a cross for an image of a re-crucified
peasant from another hemisphere
now re-hung as symbol
of more conquest and blood.
Enough!
Wash off and roll back
the gold of entombment
Roll back to the manger
Back from gilded institutions,
protecting doctrine,
theological positions
and righteously worded
acts of exclusion.
Back from warmed meeting rooms and manipulated
priorities
that leave growing numbers
out in the cold,
Out in the cold
where the road
leads back to the manger.
A manger! The manger!
Who would go to a manger.
Not those who have found
Insolated and momentary shelter
in the proverbial inn
of tunnel vision purpose
and comforting answers
that shut out the ageless cold
where those who
“will always be with you”
(said the crucified peasant
born in a manger,) dwell.

Those who dwell out there,
unhindered by temporary comfort,
and longing for warmth
are drawn to the manger.
Where they find, not a high priest,
nor a vaunted leader,
not the lives of the rich and famous
nor icons of paranoid blandness
hyped as religious purity.
But an infant and a family

as vulnerable to the need
of true and lasting warmth
as they.
Back to the manger where shepherds and late night taxi drivers,
street workers and sleepers
outcasts and migrant sojourners
desperate and calloused predators, and wasted warriors,
discarded fodder of useless wars,
dwell,
in that coldness,
closer to the eternal wind
and closest to the manger
where their hope would
witness it’s birth.
Back to the manger
where walls of delusional insulation
are absent.
And life is real, not virtual
Where power broker’s
revisionist history
is buried by His story.
A story that Angels greet
With anthems sweet
While today’s and yesterday’s
Shepherds watch are keeping.
Back at the manger where
Coercive power is silenced
and the salvation of liberation awakes from its sleeping .

By Rev. John Wichman