For one year, I sat outdoors almost every day. Teacup in hand, I rested beneath an old pine tree in my back yard. It was an act of seeking, in an unlikely place. I found a few poems that year, or maybe they found me. Like this one…

Christmas

wind whips
flakes fleck
dark pine

leans shivers
shakes cold
grace pours

sky opens
soul bends
breaks.

Tomorrow, Christmas will be here at last. In the most unlikely places, may your heart bend and break. Grace is poised, waiting to pour.

“Christmas” is reprinted from InsideOut: poems. “Pine in the Storm” pastel by L.L. Barkat.

The match strikes. You hold your breath. A child is lighting the Advent candle, and the wick is stubborn. Flicker, flicker. Will it go out? You wait, heart beating.

At last it sets flame.

The bending, tentative light seems so small. Still, you begin to breathe again. It’s truly beautiful, a curve of expectancy.

This Christmas, I’ve been thinking about bringing gifts of light to a particular kind of darkness, though I feel as inadequate as a little child, sputtering match in hand.

Sixty to one hundred million women are “missing” from the world’s population; among the living many are oppressed. I will never forget a picture I once saw in the New York Times magazine, of girls in a window display. Each girl had a number pinned to her clothing.

They were so young, and despite that they would be “otherwise engaged” throughout the day and night, they were sitting simply. One was combing the long black hair of another, like any young girl playing with friends.

Reading Forgotten Girls I was taken by the invitation to write a poem from an oppressed girl’s point of view. As I began to write, I remembered the girls in the window…

“Number 100 Million and One”

I am the girl in the window
combing her hair twined and black
smiling so no one will know

there’s a scar on my heart that grows
in the night, when I lie on my back
I am the girl in the window

crimsoned with memories of low
men and high, bright keepers who track,
smiling so no one will know

even the wind, when it whispers and blows
disperses my secrets beyond the black
I am the girl in the window

beseeching the stars to silently show
a hidden path past wall’s slim crack
smiling so no one will know

the shush of my soul as it ebbs and it flows
searches for red silken ribbon gone slack
I am the girl in the window,
smiling so no one will know.

The world is a pretty big place, needs all ’round. Maybe the need of our enslaved sisters speaks to your heart. If so, strike a match. We are holding our breath with you, waiting.

—-

“Resist the Darkness” in soft pastel, by L.L. Barkat. First published with the poem “Number 100 Million and One” at Love Notes to Yahweh. To learn more about our forgotten sisters, go to Stitchable Sisters, where you can listen in on a Conversation with Michele Rickett of Sisters in Service, which encourages us to Resist the Darkness.

“This is the palace that Jesus was born in.”

She pats my face with her hand, holds the paper high so that I can’t miss her drawing. In her art journal, she’s scrawled JESiS (backwards J) over that wee head tucked into the cradle, like a neon sign, so He can’t be missed. Sometimes I need that to see Him too.

“Now that is one very beautiful baby Jesus.” I smile and she dances happy. “And this is the palace roof?” I point to what looks like a gold onion dome.

She nods slow, unsure.

“Oh. So tell me, sweet,” I kneel down to really see the world through her eyes… “Tell be about Jesus being born in a palace.”

She shakes her head, those eyes all large. “Nooooo…. I know He wasn’t born in a palace really. I just want Him to be born in a palace — not in a BARN. Babies aren’t supposed to be born in barns! Pigs are!”

I sweep her mop of curls out of her eyes, this wisp of a girl who rises every morning in the dark to go out with her dad, her five siblings, to feed the sows at the barn. This girl knows the smell of a barn.

“Didn’t you read last night by the candles that we would call Jesus a Prince of Peace? He should have been born in a palace, Mama.” She cups my face, eyes begging.

And I stroke her cheek, her angst, and whisper soft, words for me.

“But Jesus knew ours was a world stuck in the mire and reeking with sin. Sort of like a barn with all the pigs squealing. He came as the Prince of Peace to the hurting and dirty places where we need Him most…” I search her eyes. A glimmer of understanding?

But she’s staring at her penciled Jesus. She drops down into my lap, and together, we gaze at the way she’s made the lines, shaped the world.

Her sister cuts stars for a nativity scene, her brother sketches a grotto at Bethlehem. Crayons and snippets and visions scatter everywhere. The house is a whir of creativity and it feels powerfully right, Edenic. This art is a way of looking for the Creator Who Comes, a way of expressing who we are and offering it back to the Artist.

Each Christmas we make, imitating the Prince of Peace, who came to Remake a broken down world.

“Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called sons of God,” reads Mt 5:9.

“The Greek word for peacemakers is eirenepoios, which can be interpreted as “peace poets” suggesting that peace is a thing to be crafted or made,” writes Makoto Fujimura.

“We need to seek ways to be not just peacekeepers, but to be engaged as “peacemakers.”

What if Christmas was about families gathering to be Peace Makers and Peace Poets, change makers who offered themselves in words and pictures and color and beauty? What if families created annual Portfolios of PeaceMaking, a collection of creative works that saw Jesus in the weeks of Advent through drawings and story? Peace poets and peacemakers who craft and write and draw and create and make peace with our hands, to become sons of God too with gifts for the Prince of Peace — making gifts for His wounded world.

Art, what Aristotle defined as “our capacity to make,” this “art should cause violence to be set aside,” posited Leo Tolstoy. What better way to “make the nations prove the wonders of His love” than to make and create, so that violence might be put aside this Christmas, the violence of oppression, of materialism, of poverty, of consumerism.

Wouldn’t the best thing to make this Christmas be peace?

I run my hand across her paper, this Jesus Babe in a palace, and her art, it teaches me about me. It cuts me to the quick: I do exactly what this four-year-old has done. I redraw Christmas too — make it about palaces and lights and winter wonderlands and forget that He comes to the neglected and unlikely — to the wounded places.

It is never too late to remake Christmas… to make it one that meets the Prince of Peace where He can always be found — with the poor and dispossessed.

“Sweet…” I tuck a curl behind her ear. “How would you like to draw a picture of Jesus for one of our Compassion children?”

She grins.

“Okay! For Anna. And I’ll color it… and this time, Mama?” She crawls up off my lap, turns to face me and I can see it in her eyes, how art remakes us — and the world.

“This time, Mama, Baby Jesus will be born in a barn.”

Would you like to be a ChristmasChange Maker?

Consider creating an annual ChristmasChange Portfolio of Creative PeaceMaking — a simple, organic expression of your creative selves!

5 Ways to Make the Best Things this Christmas

1. Leave an art journal out on a coffee table with a pencil throughout the holy-days — or hang a roll of paper on the back of a door. Leave a camera on the counter to encourage seeing glimpses of His beauty.

2. Encourage family members to recreate – draw, write, paint ways they have seen Jesus in their day — just leaving a pencil and journal laying open will invite doodles and ideas and joy.

3. Jot down a phrase, a quote overheard, a praise prayer in your collective PeaceMaking Portfolio. Be a Peace Poet for the Prince of Peace.

4. Consider snapping a picture of your family’s creative endeavors –  your makings in art, in the kitchen, the workshop, the sewing room — and sharing with us at the ChristmasChange Makers group at Flickr.

Or upload a video at the ChristmasChange Makers Flickr group of your family poetry jam, your night of tap dancing, your impromptu night of songmaking! Have fun and enjoy the wonder of creating like our Creator Father!

5. Then share your art. With a sponsored child, an elderly shut in, a sick neighbor, a homeless person — anyone in need of a smile. Bring peace and healing to the wounded through the beauty of creativity. (Consider making copies of your art that you share, or photographing the original pieces you share, so that year to year, you leave a family legacy of making peace with art.)

Wouldn’t it be neat to gather as a community of ChristmasChange Makers making the very best thing this Christmas? Peace makers welcoming the Prince of Peace.

Q

4U:

What are you making this Christmas?