How Can It Be?

Two Christmases ago I got a linocraft kit from Sally as a present. I suspect it is another way of her keeping me in the attic during my time off! Since then I have, from time to time produced various prints. I am even less assured in my printing endeavours than I am in my poetic ones. In both I am, at best, an enthusiastic amateur, or as Stephen Fry's father apparently described him, a "pasticheur". That is very much the case with the image here which is based directly on an “African Madonna” by Hennie Niemann Jnr. I created it last year over my Christmas break for use as a Christmas card this year and using some tools sent to me and advice given to me by a Bedlam Theatre friend and skilled print artist Matt Barrell from London, when producing it. Little did I know that by the time that this Christmas came, he would have died. So I have entitled it "Madonna for Matt."

But events in the media over recent weeks including Jeremy Clarkson's appalling column, Alice Robert's predictable seasonal insults about the credulity of religious people, the attempted restriction of women's rights by Republicans in the USA and further crack-downs on women by the Taliban, set me thinking again about the young woman behind this image and other young women and people of genuine faith today and throughout his/herstory. And this was the result:

How can it be?

In a rational world 

that she or we could humbly
believe such a mystery,

despite the mockery 

and potential persecution

the baby might bring,
rather than demanding
all the answers now?

Such naivety to accept

The possibility of nativity.

How can it be?

In a world where old men
humiliate young women
for the least offense,
imagined or real,
stripping them naked
in their dreams,
or reality, of rights
and protection and perhaps
even life itself
for transgressing what
is deemed acceptable –

How can it be?
That such a young woman,
unmarried but expectant,
betrothed to a supposed

descendent of royalty, 

unlikely to inherit 

any earthly crown,

uprooted from her home,

harried into exile –

How can it be?
That she is exalted
while the powerful
and the proud are
brought tumbling down

and the truly wise

(of whatever faith or none)

bow the knee.
That’s what Herods 

and Caesars and their

religious apologists

still fear.

Blessed are the shamed
.

Let it be so.

Shalom