Desire of Nations
It's almost Christmas - a fact the radio stations won't stop reminding me of. I love Christmas music, but I can only handle so much absurdly melodramatic Mariah Carey belting lyrics that clash with the majority of her other vocal performances. I love Christmas presents, but I hate that Christmas in the US is synonymous with credit card overdraft. I love Christmas trees, but I feel sorry that for many people obtaining and decorating the tree is just a necessary chore.
Christmas reminds me that I am tired, that my family is going far away, that when Mary was my age her first baby was probably older than my youngest sibling is, that I simply don't have the exquisite decorative abiliies my roommate has, that there are still another four months of cold weather, that I will never be able to sing "Mary, Did You Know" like Ceelo Green does. People will still be sick on Christmas - I will be taking care of [hopefully no more than] four of them. People will still be stressed and selfish on Christmas - I will probably be proof of this, and will feel both shamed and justified by my patients' behavior.
These are the moments when I am so thankful for the weary longing of Christmas songs. When I can listen beyond the wailing of Mariah Carey, the crooning of Michael Buble, and so on and so forth etcetera etcetera with every song, I find my own sigh in the words.
"Above the sad and lowly plains they bend on hovering wing; the world in solemn stillness lay to hear the angels sing... on a cold winter's night that was so deep... 'there is no peace on earth,' I said... ransom captive Israel that mourns in lowly exile here... myrrh is mine, its bitter perfume breathes a life of gathering gloom: sorrowing, sighing, bleeding, dying, sealed in the stone cold tomb... said the night wind to the little lamb, 'do you hear what I hear?'... oh come Desire of Nations, come..."
When I think about what Christmas means, I think of that last line. "Desire of Nations." Not all these other things we are desiring - or not desiring. The deeper desire ringing true in all of us... the wanting to be warm, to be safe, to be fed, to belong, to be wanted. And every Christmas I am reminded frequently of my favorite poem by Molly Peacock, because I have this feeling... or maybe a wanting to feel... that Christmas means that there is something enough to fill the hole inside me and something enough to still the wildness of me. Something that wants to do that.
It doesn't speak and it isn't schooled,
like a small foetal animal with wettened fur.
It is the blind instinct for life unruled,
visceral frankincense and animal myrrh.
It is what babies bring to kings,
an eyes-shut, ears-shut medicine of the heart
that smells and touches endings and beginnings
without the details of time's experienced part-
fit-into-part-fit-into-part. Like a paw,
it is blunt; like a pet who knows you
and nudges your knee with its snout - but more raw
and blinder and younger and more divine, too,
than the tamed wild - it's the drive for what is real,
deeper than the brain's detail: the drive to feel.
- Molly Peacock, "Desire"
Christmas reminds me that I am tired, that my family is going far away, that when Mary was my age her first baby was probably older than my youngest sibling is, that I simply don't have the exquisite decorative abiliies my roommate has, that there are still another four months of cold weather, that I will never be able to sing "Mary, Did You Know" like Ceelo Green does. People will still be sick on Christmas - I will be taking care of [hopefully no more than] four of them. People will still be stressed and selfish on Christmas - I will probably be proof of this, and will feel both shamed and justified by my patients' behavior.
These are the moments when I am so thankful for the weary longing of Christmas songs. When I can listen beyond the wailing of Mariah Carey, the crooning of Michael Buble, and so on and so forth etcetera etcetera with every song, I find my own sigh in the words.
"Above the sad and lowly plains they bend on hovering wing; the world in solemn stillness lay to hear the angels sing... on a cold winter's night that was so deep... 'there is no peace on earth,' I said... ransom captive Israel that mourns in lowly exile here... myrrh is mine, its bitter perfume breathes a life of gathering gloom: sorrowing, sighing, bleeding, dying, sealed in the stone cold tomb... said the night wind to the little lamb, 'do you hear what I hear?'... oh come Desire of Nations, come..."
When I think about what Christmas means, I think of that last line. "Desire of Nations." Not all these other things we are desiring - or not desiring. The deeper desire ringing true in all of us... the wanting to be warm, to be safe, to be fed, to belong, to be wanted. And every Christmas I am reminded frequently of my favorite poem by Molly Peacock, because I have this feeling... or maybe a wanting to feel... that Christmas means that there is something enough to fill the hole inside me and something enough to still the wildness of me. Something that wants to do that.
It doesn't speak and it isn't schooled,
like a small foetal animal with wettened fur.
It is the blind instinct for life unruled,
visceral frankincense and animal myrrh.
It is what babies bring to kings,
an eyes-shut, ears-shut medicine of the heart
that smells and touches endings and beginnings
without the details of time's experienced part-
fit-into-part-fit-into-part. Like a paw,
it is blunt; like a pet who knows you
and nudges your knee with its snout - but more raw
and blinder and younger and more divine, too,
than the tamed wild - it's the drive for what is real,
deeper than the brain's detail: the drive to feel.
- Molly Peacock, "Desire"
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