Finding Bethlehem

This is a book review. It will perhaps be an odd one, for the book is not new. It is not on any best seller list. It perhaps had its day of fame long ago. I cannot say. I wasn’t there. But I do know that over the years it had made its way to the back shelves of a convent library, there to eventually be covered in dust - forgotten.

It fell into my hands quite fortuitously, or to be more precise, providentially – by the Divine machinations of a God who knew me so well as to assume He would find me haunting the back shelves. I have a penchant for dusty books.

The cover was of old and torn blue cloth with a picture of Our Lady, whose pretty cheek had been rubbed raw by a repetitively clutching thumb. She didn’t seem to mind, though, and smiled serenely. The title fell like a zephyr: A Woman Wrapped in Silence. I opened it to a random page and read:

Not true to think
Her tears were not as salt as tears may be,
And not as real. It is not true to say
Her sweetness made a cushion for the blows
That fell on her, and left her warmed and snug
Against the starkness of the staring night.
This voice could laugh, and sob, and sing, and cry:
This was a woolen garment that she wore
About her tired shoulders, and the hands
That brushed the weight of hair from off her brow
Were roughened with the water jars, and knew
The feel of sunlight and the form of bread.

The words rang round me like the sound of fairy verse being read aloud. Not exactly poetry, not exactly prose, but some gentler mix of sweetness distilled from both. It moved like the gentle sway of a woman as she worked to her own peaceful, solitary rhythm. I was lulled by the sound the words made as I read them aloud in a whisper. They conjured up peace and a childlike need to hear more; as if my soul were saying, “Again. Again.” to some indulgent, accommodating grandfather with an opened book before us in his lap. For, it is a universal truth that old, beautiful stories belong to grandfathers. It is their realm of expertise. And this story seemed no exception. It seemed ancient and worn and hidden in the dust of lovely, forgotten things. Oddly, it seemed to be written only to me with the unhurried pen of someone whom I was certain loved me and had nothing but time to weave a tale. The words wove the tale of a lady, sweet and lovely. A grandfather’s words. His name, I was to discover, was John Lynch.

I have never met my own grandfathers. I have only heard tell of them, and what I heard was delightful. Delightful enough to make me feel a little twinge of regret whenever I see an older gentleman with his grandchildren. Grandfathers are dads who now have time; unhurried swaths of time to take a little child's hand and walk around the park listening attentively to their interesting chatter about flowers, dogs, cracks in the sidewalks, and the latest book from the library, which they must solemnly promise at that very moment, to read again when the walk is over.

A grandfather is one who can genuinely stand as spellbound as a child when marveling at trash trucks picking up dumpsters like small toys, and then nod in serious approval when an earnest little face looks up to his and shares the deep held secret that he is going to be a trash man when he grows up. The answer is always the same, “You will make a very fine trash man.”

Grandfathers are a beautiful, affirming presence. They don’t judge. Grandfathers do not need to worry about the future, as fathers will for their children. Grandfathers are there as keepers of the past, who reveal their treasures one tantalizing story at a time. But not just any stories. They tell us delicious tales of moms and dads who once were children, babies even. Things parents cannot even tell us. A child learns about the good old days from this ancient, wise storyteller who loves them so deeply it hurts, and because he loves so deeply, he knows exactly what this particular child needs to hear, when and where, and he tells the tale to unhurried perfection.

John Lynch is not my real grandfather, and yet in a very real sense he has become so. The Grandfather of my soul’s journey. He appeared on those dusty shelves to share a story about Our Lady with me. A story I had most definitely not heard before. It was like he was certain it needed to be told now, at this moment. I felt an urgency in his words – that the future depended upon it. This was my personal ‘when and where’ moment. I sat near the bookshelf, slid to the sun dappled floor among the dust motes… and read.

With heart-in-hand confession here, I admit I have had a nebulous, spotty relationship with Our Lady all my life. I have never been drawn to her as strongly as so many saints and friends I know. I have felt an empty hearted guilt that gorgeous titles like Our Lady Queen, Our Lady Star of the Sea, Our Lady in gold of Ophir have left me devoid of any emotion. The Mysteries of the Rosary were a tedious duty. I prayed them as if staring at one-dimensional tableaus desperately willing them to stir up in me the love and devotion I thought I should have. They never quite did. Not that I haven’t drawn comfort from her rosary and received many an answer to a puzzlement. But that was all to her gracious kindness – despite my devotionally empty heart. She knew one day I would find her in a place familiar to us both. She is patient, Our Lady.

I was very much like that child who impulsively grabs the book and flutters the pages forward: “Skip to the end!” was my impatient mantra. Skip to the good part. I was always an Easter person. I loved being on the road with Jesus. I would sit and listen there forever. But Angels fluttering messages, oxen, asses, shepherds, and Bethlehem, though necessary to the story, left me with nothing to think upon. I knew nothing of babies or mothers with child. I was the youngest in my family and had no experience with the joy of babies in a house, or ever watched my mother hold one. I was her last. I had no memory of babies to feed my prayer. So, I left Our Lady’s home when Jesus did and never went back. There was nothing there for me. Shame on my impatient youth. Blessed be the mercy God has showed me since.

But on that providential afternoon by the dusty shelves, I found John Lynch saying quite gently but firmly, “Let us begin at the beginning. No skipping.” I consented as I had been drawn in by that first paragraph. Mesmerized would not be too strong a word. I settled in.

We started on the path Our Lady’s own feet had trod and loved. He reminded me that she was a girl, a girl who loved her home. A girl that did work, laughed quietly with her friends, walked to the well and felt at home among her Nazarean kinsmen. A girl who loved the very sound of psalms being prayed aloud.

These were her own, these lanes
Of Nazareth. She’d known the slope and feel
Of them for all her years, and they had known
Of her, and she was walking now and was
Familiar….
These thresholds were her friends,
These white walls leaning, and the narrow doors…
And passing on, she marked with deeper care that from an opened window
Rose the sound of psalms. She was at home.

The quiet weaving of his words made me relax into patience. I wanted, at last, to stay here in Nazareth with her who slowly began to take on dimensionality. And I to love these, her ways, so familiar to mine and yet so other. I at last was able to say about Our Lady what I had never been able to say, “Again. Again.” It filled me with an indescribable gratitude. And I knew I owed a debt to John Lynch I could never repay.

We passed through Nazareth and the mysterious day she was asked to be the Mother of God and how puzzled she must have been and how she had to go on with life as before knowing what she knew. I traveled over the dusty hills with her to Elizabeth’s house and rejoiced with my own actual tears that she at last was able to shout out her joy to someone who understood her fully. I too knew what that felt like in my own life. And Joseph. How Joseph must have felt holding that Divine Baby for the first time. The hush. The overwhelming emotion of being a father. The looks they must have shared across that dank hay. The gratitude she radiated to him. The courage he gained. I read of Kings reduced to childlike wonder and helplessness before this strange, mesmerizing child who led them with a star. I was with her when He grew up and got lost and how terrified she was and would she ever find God’s Child again? How could He have ever entrusted her with such a task? I heard Him say goodbye to her and realized for the first time how lonely she would have been without Him – but she consented with a smile and a new woven robe, like every other mom in the Universe. We traveled to Jerusalem, to his long and arduous way of the cross and her keeping time with her eyes and her heart. His death. His death, and she his mother. And why hadn’t I ever thought of that? The human sorrow that seared her - everything. The secrets she and I shared in that moment were profound. The day of waiting and He with His pure light of resurrection mingling with the dusty dawn light of her solitary, simple room. On and on John Lynch read and I with him. It was late when I looked up and the bookcase was in a duskier light. I found Our Lady that day. I didn’t want to leave. But John Lynch took my hand in his warm words as I hugged that book close and he led me back to life - changed.

I have since discovered a treasured copy of my own. I have read it over and over again, seeing something new and beautiful each time. But the very best was the last, as they say. I came to a day where I held my first child in my arms – a son. I now knew what a mother was. I felt the whole warmth of life held captive in 21 inches of frame. I knew the pain and joy of having a beautiful boy. John Lynch was picked up again – he was never very far. The pages fell open to Bethlehem, and this grandfather who never tired of showing my soul Our Lady’s beauty and glory and kindness and humanity, told me the story once again. He held my hand with his words and gazed with me upon my child and read to my heart this now familiar story of a woman wrapped in silence who seemed to smile so gently upon me and my beautiful boy. I had finally found Bethlehem.