Once, when I was a younger man, I found myself wandering in a shadowy wood. The wood gave way to hills, the hills to plains. The plains to a path that sought to be straight and led me to a stable with a manger.
Yes, that stable, made part by God in the rock and part by men of stones and wood and so recently swept by angels.
No need to be saccharine. I knew what I would find. A flood of tears left my eyes. She shone through my shimmering sight, kneeling at the manger and called to me with the gesture and expression of a mother urging her child to come and see.
As I stood by the manger, she lifted her baby and gave him to me. Heaven filled all of me and I wondered to live. She let me hold him as we walked in that jeweled tabernacle smelling of straw and glory.
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Not so long later, I stumbled in on them again. This time, he walked with me like a son learning the world. “Look,” I pointed at the stars filling the sky.
“You made this.”
But he looked at me instead of the stars, smiling and never speaking. God! My heart was struck and wrought! For each thing — the grass, the birds, the squirrels, the sounds, the smells — “You made this!” My tears could not be quelled and his silence could not sing louder.
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Today, I knelt with my face in an empty manger, my tears darkening the blessed thing. He came to me and bent down to lift my head.
“Look,” I told him. “All these gifts and I am old and have nothing but tears. Look at my tears!”
But he was looking at me, not the tears. And his smile came through his own tears and brought my smile through mine. Then, with his wounded hand he touched my heart and spoke to me.
“I made this.”
