My favourite Christmas reflection -- artwork and narrative. Canadian artist William Kurelek's A Northern Nativity: christmas dreams of a prairie boy is a stunning collection of images and incarnational imaginings. Kurelek based this book on his own childhood dreams (in the Depression years) coupled with his adult life experience -- on the theme that Christ came to all people everywhere. What would happen if He came now? He imagines that the nativity takes place in northern snows. He dreams that the Christ child is born to Eskimos, to Indians, to Blacks, that the Nativity takes place in a fisherman’s hut, a garage, a cowboy’s barn, that the holy family is given refuge in a city mission, a grain barn, and a country school. Try getting through one page without tears... that the God of the universe knows, recognizes, accepts and incarnates in my culture, space and worldview.
Two Barns
Mary and the Child are resting in the mountains in the straw of an abandoned barn.
Through the open side of the barn, traffic can be seen speeding by on a new highway. Some cars pull in at a neighbouring barn that has been turned into an antique shop. The shoppers are searching for beauty from the past to give their lives interest. Yet none thinks of looking up to the other old barn; none seems aware of the very source of beauty so close by.
William feels moved to intrude into the scene. He walks quietly, so as not to disturb the Mother kneeling in adoration befor her Babe. On the old timbers where children and tourists have carved their initials, he uses his jackknife to carve the words of a saint of old:
Late have I loved you O ancient Beauty ever old and ever new.
Comments