‽istis reclaims the miracle of a baby (weekending December 26th 2020)
In this ‘Christmas week’: celebrated, cancelled, someone-else’s
festival, meaningful, met with indifference, commercialised, believed, appropriated,
TV-binge-ridden, alcohol-binge-ridden, domestic abuse-ridden, ignored, resented,
rejoiced-in, delivered in a van, worked-through, argued-through, loved-through,
slept through, wept-through… ‽istis reclaims and wonders at the birth of
a baby:
‽ not an apparent history-splicing,
GM human/divine hybrid, specific-faith-venerated Christ-child - supposedly bringing
‘peace on earth’, ‘goodwill’, etc., etc.[i] whose birth was purportedly
heralded by angels, witnessed by shepherds, and re-enacted by
schoolchildren (if only online) in the guise of assorted third camels, second astronauts,
Santas[ii], dinosaurs and the
occasionally tea-towel be-clad etc., etc…
‽ not just the birth of another
very naughty boy (among the oh, so many naughty boys of ‘history’)
…but every single baby[iii].
Each one perhaps an utter, utter miracle of DNA; of
planning or non-planning; of more or (sometimes very-much) less loving close encounters;
of science and physician-assisted skill; of nature and nurture in glorious interaction…
Whose averagely adult blood vessels laid end to end
would circle the Equator four times; whose average tummy button may hold 67
different types of bacteria (in symbiotic symbolism?); who averagely may lose
44kg of skin cells every year (in a seemingly endless physical transformation?);
whose typical nerves carry information around at about 400kph; who may not shed
an actual tear until perhaps a month after birth (but may shed many
thereafter?); whose averagely life-spanned heart (chance and social circumstance
permitting?) will quite possibly beat more than 3 billion times[iv] (and occasionally skip a
beat in wonder and love and gratitude?), etc., etc…
And, as perhaps for some, Christmas leads to Easter; so too ‽istis wonders and rejoices and sometimes despairs at what birth leads
to…
But ‽istis wonders also: if we could possibly
kneel in adoration, and reclaim and wonder a little more at the miracle of the
birth of every single child, might we just imagine again how different the
world could be?
© Pistis
NB: further reflections and comments linked to this
week’s theme and past blog
entries to be found on Twitter: replies, retweets (which don’t necessarily
indicate approval, sometimes the very opposite!) and ‘likes’:
[i]
That went well… discuss!
[ii] …because
if we believe in Father Christmas and his physics-defying present-delivering
ways, well we might just believe in any old (bah!) humbug…
[iii]
All estimated 385,000 of them today: https://www.theworldcounts.com/stories/How-Many-Babies-Are-Born-Each-Day
[iv] All
information from: https://www.natgeokids.com/uk/discover/science/general-science/15-facts-about-the-human-body/
(N.B: words in parenthesis, Pistis’ own for dramatic effect!) And, of course,
as ever – you might like to add your own quite interesting ‘facts’…
