Glad of Another Death...

I love Christmas Eve. For one moment, the world hangs full on the brink of something, and every slither of skin seems to stretch towards it in anticipation, waiting and wishing and tingling to be ready. And its the magic night too, the one time I have very little trouble believing in an awesome, loving God, when all the possibilities and stories and characters I have loved gather themselves about me in solemn anticipation and -
...well, suffice to say thast christmas pales in comparison. Christmas eve is where its at.

Last night though, due to a careful calender, was the carol service, which was almost a beginning in itself. And I woke up this morning already tingling with the quiet excitement that doesnt usually seem to set in until about 5pm today, and...wrote...



So early its still almost dark out, as the
hours and minutes meld into
vague wakefulness, something,
somewhere, starts. Nothing
special, not yet, no
fanfares firing through the hazy half-night dawn, no
breaking news blazoned across a screen, just
silence,
and stillness,
and sleep-stained
waiting.
And, somewhere in the dulled down dark,
the fresh onset of pain.


and then, from a prose perspective....



The night was cold and dark, with a wind that bit against their bones like a wild dog prowling around the houses.
In a room upstairs, the women waited. Even above the clustered bustle of visitors, the screams were unmistakable. Somewhere in that dark night, life was slowly dying.
The women glanced uncomfortably from one to the other; familiar, welcoming faces weathered to weary self-interest, and tried to ignore the cries.
“We could have housed them here?” one, still young, ventured at last.
The elders shook their heads.
“In a house of whores?” another asked, her eyes dull despite the bitterness whipping through her words. “The likes of them have little time for the likes of us.”
An uncomfortable silence settled over the room once again. And, outside, the screams continued. In the room upstairs the women waited, and tried to hope that the new day would not begin with a babe and mother dead, left to fade to a memory in a manger.

Early that morning, while it was still dark, the women went to the tomb, and saw that the stable door had been left ajar. From the stillness within, they thought that they could hear a voice singing. They glanced at each other, barely daring to hope, and crept closer.
In the dusty darkness of the make-shift stable, a baby began to cry.


***

Am I, I wonder, the only person who goes to church and comes back with stories, rather than any interesting theological development? Because I have two new, more adult, tales hovering on the tip of me pen, and I want to write them both. And to have the luxury of time in which to do so. Whereas other people occasionally seem to go for theology.

Oh well.

Happy Christmas to you all, anyway

xxxx

*'so early its still almost dark out', I should add, is a line from a poem called Happiness by Raymond Carver, and the line 'life is slowly dying' is a reference to Philip Larkin's Nothing To Be Said. And, obviously, the prose piece deliberately references the bible, most notably John's gospel. To prevent being hauled away on charges of plagarism... ;)