Just Some Christmas Musings....

                Epiphany:  An appearance of sudden and striking realization.

                Yep, I had one of those just  the other morning, while I was tidying up the barn  (it is not particularly shocking that a number of my epiphanies occur in the barn, given that I spend a fair amount of time there.  I suppose one could argue that  if my hobby were cleaning bathrooms, I might have striking realizations while scrubbing out the toilet bowl.  However,  knowing me as you probably do, you will not be at all surprised to learn that  for me and many of my ilk, the barn is definitely our  spiritual place). 

                Anyway,   I had  finished breakfast and my daily  surf in the addictive sea of baloney  that is social media,   then headed out on this sparklingly cold, sunny morning  to clear my head and  care for the ponies.   As usual Facebook had been full of blood pressure-raising  inaccurate factoids,  political half-truths  and incorrectly punctuated memes that naturally  lodged themselves  in my head  and continued to annoy me like stupid songs that, once heard, become  earworms rattling   through your cerebrum  in an endless loop  for about eleventy-seven days (in this category, in case you're interested, I include Disney's  Zippity-Do-Dah,  comic Heywood Banks'  The Cat Got Dead,  The Night Chicago Died by Paper Lace and -  especially appropriate for this season -   I Want A Hippopotamus for Christmas,  and a weirdly mesmerizing  version of Jingle Bells rendered in Mongolian throat singing).  (And if that generates an earworm for you as well, you're welcome....). 

                One particular Facebook post that  I couldn't let go dealt with the traditional Christian Nativity story, which of course had been given a political slant a propos Today's World Situation (I hate it when they do that....).   It was all about the poor Holy Family,  "refugees"  who had been forced to take shelter in a stable.  In a stable.  As if that were a bad thing.  Luke's Gospel says only that the Holy Family sought shelter in a stable because "there was no room at the inn."  Apocryphal books and legends flesh out the story a little more.  Somewhere along the line, we get the impression that   the "inkeeper's wife" tossed out the idea of bedding the couple  down in the barn, as if this nameless  woman was  a stingy, heartless miser  out to use every inch of available space to squeeze the shekels out of the masses forced to swarm to the thriving metropolis of Bethlehem because "in those days there went out a decree from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be taxed", and everyone was supposed to report to their familial stomping grounds for some semblance of an accurate counting (the Romans in those days were sticklers for detail.  When you're financing an empire roughly the size of the known world, you have to be).       There I was, mulling all this over as I watched dust motes swirl around in the sunbeams bursting  through  the barn door,   and pushing  errant strands of hay in front of my broom.   And suddenly I  had a feeling that I knew how it really played out.  

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                Her father was good with horses.  And so, as it turned out, was she.  The old women in the community  felt that Levi spoiled Rachel, his only child, by allowing her to help with his training prospects  when she should have been learning to cook and sew and weave cloth, but in truth she had a gift that he believed must have been  given to her by Yaweh Himself.  She could soothe  a nervous mare about to have her first foal,  coax a frightened colt past a strange obstacle,  calm an  unruly gelding objecting to a creaking  pack saddle fastened to its back.    Even the Romans sought out Levi and his daughter to train their mounts.  

                The time came for her to be married to a cousin in distant Bethlehem,  and Levi felt his heart sink as the cart carried Rachel  and her possessions over the hills outside the town.   He would miss her straightforward outlook on  life and her dry sense of humor as much as his  horses would miss her skilled touch,  but the Law was the Law, and she had to be married.  Ezra was a good man, an innkeeper with a solid business, and Levi  would see them on  Holy Days.    He raised a hand again and stood watching the dust settle  from their passing long after they had disappeared. 

              

  Years passed.   Ever pragmatic, Rachel adapted easily to the life of innkeeping.  She found people interesting and entertaining,  and if at times the crowds became too noisy she would retreat to the little stable built into a cave at the back of their property and find solace with the animals they kept.  Ezra sensed there were occasions when she needed the peace she found there, and if he had to do a little extra work in her absence, he knew when she returned she would be the better for it, and let her be. 

                One frosty week during the winter months, people in droves surged into the little city.  Homes were  filled to bursting by family members obeying the latest edict from Caesar, a directive that sent everyone to their hometowns to register for a census.  Accommodations at the inn were in high demand and short supply.  Travelers were  even willing to pay  extra to bed down on the floor  in the common room at night.      "No good will come of it," announced a Galilean trader, sloshing wine out of his clay  cup in  an emphatic  gesture.  " Mark my words, I guarantee the Romans will   find a way to get more  money out of us somehow.    Caesar probably wants to build another temple to himself.  Census," he snorted again , "that's rich."  Several other patrons in the common room nodded.  "It's so they can tax us accurately, that's what," another man added,  and a low rumble of dissatisfaction spread throughout  the crowded little room.  

                Just then the door banged open, slammed against the wall by a gust of wind.   A bearded young man grabbed the sill, looking sheepish.  "I'm sorry," he said, "but we're seeking lodgings and we need help.  My wife is in labor."

                Ezra shook his head. "Man, we're completely full.  Even the floor space will be occupied in an hour or so, and your wife won't want to be in here with this crew.   I wish I could help, but  I don't know what to tell you." 

                The young man's  expression turned  desperate  His tanned face was prematurely lined with worry.  "Listen, we've been travelling all this week.  Eighty miles.  My pregnant  wife has had to ride eighty miles on a donkey, and now she's in labor.  She's been the soul of tolerance, but to tell you the truth she's just about at the end of her rope, and I'm afraid to go out there and tell her you don't have any room.  This is the last stop on the edge of town for us.    She's going to kill me and the donkey if I don't find a decent place for her to have this baby  tonight."  

                The men looked at each other, helpless, but from the back of the room Rachel came  through the door and pushed her husband aside.  "I've got a place for you."  She tugged Ezra's sleeve and spoke softly into his ear as he leaned toward her, "they can stay in the stable." 

                Ezra was scandalized.  "The stable?  That's no place for a woman in labor," he hissed back, but Rachel put her hands on her hips and stared up at him.  "So you have a better idea?"  She turned to the young man still standing hopefully in the doorway.  

                "Look," she said, "I just stripped all  the stalls this afternoon, so there's clean bedding knee-deep in every stall.     I can move the centurion's stallion in with our mule  - they're good friends anyway -  and turn the donkeys out back.  They've got coats like yaks this time of year, so they 'll be all right.  I can tie a gate across one corner with twine from the sheaves of hay and put the goats behind that so they won't be in your face.     There's  fresh  hay in the mangers and if I know Laila - that's the cat - she 'll be curled in one of them warming up a cozy nest.   And - " she opened one hand like a conjurer, revealing four brown eggs - "the chickens have managed despite the cold   to produce your dinner."

                "But Rachel," Ezra persisted weakly , "a stable is no place for a woman in labor."

                "I don't know why not," she said.  "It's clean and dry and out of the wind; the animals will share their warmth.   It's quiet, and it doesn't smell like that Canaanite cart maker's sweaty armpits, which odor persists in our best room despite all my efforts to scrub it away.  Besides, if I were going to go through all the indignities that having a child entails, I would absolutely NOT want to do it in front of, well, God and everybody here in the common room."

                Ezra cast a pained look toward the rafters as if he were seeking divine inspiration for another  solution,   but the stranger interrupted.  "We'll take it," he said.  

                "Around to the back and follow the path," said Rachel, gesturing with the hand that held the eggs.  "I'll fix you a meal.  Ezra," she fixed her gaze on her husband, "fetch the midwife."

                When the denizens of the common room crowd finally settled into slumber several hours later and afforded her a moment of peace,  Rachel brushed the hair off her brow and peered out the back door of the inn.  Moonlight bathed the frosty  yard but  the stars glittered brightly too, as if refusing on this particular night  to be outshone by the huge but  solitary moon.   She saw that a group of  local shepherds had  settled their sheep and dogs  near the stable  under the shelter of the hill, and were singing quietly around a small fire.  She had not known they had such lovely voices.  

                She pulled her  old cloak off the peg nearby and, settling it across her shoulders,  picked  her way across the yard and peered in through the stable door.  The centurion's horse nickered softly at her approach and the ox raised its head and flicked its ears in her direction.  The young man was dozing with his back against the neatly tied sheaves of hay , and the little mother - hardly more than a child herself  - was asleep,  nestled under a cloak  in the manger.   She stirred, seeming to feel Rachel's gaze upon her, and opening her eyes, pulled back the brown woven cloth to reveal the child curled warmly against her, his curly head tucked under her chin.  Her eyes met Rachel's and her  glowing face split into a huge grin of delight and heartbreaking  sweetness.  Rachel nodded at her.  No words were needed to assure her that all was well.  She had given  the little family shelter  in  the place where she had always found peace herself. 

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                So this is a Christmas greeting  especially  for all my horsewomen friends and country dwelling sisters and fellow  children of the Earth - those who make extra room in our barns and stables and sheds and homes  and hearts    for rescues and strays and foster creatures;   those who never quite get the dirt out from under our  fingernails during  the growing season;  those whose favorite clothes - even the good ones - are never without a little hay in the pockets, and whose favorite brand  footwear is Mucks,  not Manolos .   The next time someone snaps  something  derogatory at you like, "shut the door, do you live  in a barn?" be proud to respond, "So what's wrong with that?"  Because somewhere, on a long ago night, maybe it was  really someone like one of us who shared her favorite  place of peace and safety with someone in need .   And you know the rest of that story.

                Besides...a little stable set up next to your tree or on your mantle sure makes a nicer Christmas decoration than the Hebrew equivalent of a Motel  6, doesn't it?

                Merry Christmas, to all of us!