To all, for Christmas
A reporter´s notebook
To all, for Christmas
By Manuel Alberto Ramy
For days, I’ve been pondering how to greet our readers for Christmas, a feast of the spirit, family and hope – because that’s what it is, not commerce and hoopla – where we all can fit: Christians, atheists, Buddhists, Jews, Muslims, agnostics and practitioners of syncretic denominations.
How to include us all in a commemoration that to Christians means the birth of God’s son, to the atheists and agnostics (at most) a beautiful history narrated in the New Testament, and to other religions one more prophet (maybe)?
So I kept turning over in my mind some common elements: a mother, a baby, a carpenter father, alienation since birth, heterodox prayer, love to fellow humans…
Digging into my memory, I remembered that Spaniard who said that “everything’s relative, except God and hunger.” He was a priest who transgressed the consecrated rules (wasn’t the child born in Bethlehem of Judea a transgressor also?), was appointed Bishop of Sao Félix in Brazil – where he is now Bishop emeritus, given his age – was a poet and defender of mankind and every single man, but especially of those hungry for bread, justice and freedom.
His name could be humanity, because humanity vibrates in his life with an admirable consistency. He answers to the name of Pai Pedriño, Don Pedro or Monsignor Pedro María Casaldáliga, however you wish to call him.
His poem, “Suburban Godmother,” which suits us perfectly, is my present to the readers.
Suburban godmother
By Monsignor Pedro María Casaldáliga
The cave had no ventilation other than the night wind.
God’s neighborhood was stables and shacks.
– Vallecas or Bethlehem, Bethlehem or Harlem, Bethlehem or the favelas.
You had only your two hands to rock the cradle.
The rich caravans arrived always on time.
When you arrived, the doors were closed.
There was no room in Bethlehem; no room in Egypt;
And there’s no room in Madrid for you.
Joseph will be unemployed for many days.
Later he will have some hope, working on wood.
Maybe he’ll dig ditches, without subsidies.
Suspicious Jews herded in an Egyptian slum,
You are left to your own devices, like the birds.
The Nile will shrivel, day after day, the skin
And beauty of your anonymous hands,
The blood of King David is belittled.
And the Child will grow up with no schooling
Other than the lessons of the sun and your words.
Neighbor of sin and shame,
With the Word made flesh, living among us,
You have installed God in the human suburb.
Carmen, Dolores, Soledad, María:
All the names bear the baptismal shell of your name.
You live, still beset by sorrow and fear,
In a shining painting or a painted statue,
Or in the faith of a picture, shyly hidden in a purse;
And your mere routine presence
Goes beyond the miseries of the world’s suburbs
With an unbreakable thread of joy.
Suburban godmother,
An extension of Grace,
Gate and garden of the Holy City!
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