Second Terrace

on Herod, the Magi, and Rachel weeping

"Flight into Egypt," by Jean-Léon Gérôme (1897)

the weakness of the infant Christ

Let’s say up front that the demoniac, the spirit of antichrist, hates humanity. It hates humanity because humanity bears the image of the Word of God the Father. The Word (Logos) expresses Love, the complete “pouring out” of self for the other, which is precisely what Satan and the entire spirit of antichrist is opposed to.

As He is the image of the Father borne by humanity, Christ is the heart, the essence of humanity, the Son of God Who became the Son of Man.

And there is nothing more human than an infant human.

So it is no wonder that the demoniac raged against the very possibility of the Christ Child. All of its rage for all time had been waged against this moment. And at the Nativity, here it was.

All babies bear a special image of Christ. This “special image” is the humility of the Baby Jesus, but also His innocence, His infant winsomeness, His utter vulnerability that stimulates in us (as it did in the Virgin Mary and the Righteous Joseph) protection, nurturance, and courage against the worldly foe. This vulnerability is due to the fact that Son of God willingly took the risk of submerging His Divinity under the limitations of His Humanity. He became weak as a real infant. He became limited by human pregnancy and birth and breast-feeding. And, what is perhaps most amazing (even scandalous), He actually became dependent upon the Theotokos who bore Him, upon Joseph who protected Him, and upon His community who shielded and raised Him throughout His childhood and youth.

It is almost unthinkable that the God Who is Absolute and Transcendent should come so close to us (i.e., “immanent,” as opposed to “transcendent") and become even the very most opposite of Absolute — that is, He became dependent.

Every baby calls us to the eternal memory of the Child Christ, when the omnipotent God became weak, when the omniscient God took upon Himself relative ignorance, when the omnipresent God entered into our localized humanity, in time and space, in family and culture. Every infant and child reminds us, in the mystical Present, of our youthful Lord.

While it is extremely difficult for us to even think about the infinite God becoming a very finite baby, for such Love to give All Away, it is totally unthinkable for Satan and the antichrist swarms of the demoniac. This possibility is not only scandalous for the demoniac — it is met with the most extreme insane hatred.

Herod as demoniac tool

John Lord Acton wrote in 1887 that “Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” Political power, or “domination,” is one of the most spiritually perilous possibilities in life. It is best to avoid it. It is never right to seek it out. It takes an enormous effort for a king, president, or any politician to not be overcome by satanic pride. Domination is the opposite of the self-sacrificial servanthood of Divine Love. That is exactly why Lord Acton was profoundly right about the total corruption of absolute power — extreme power is utterly magnetic to the demoniac.

No one showed this more clearly than King Herod. When the Magi showed up in Jerusalem and asked “Where is he who has been born king of the Jews?” (Matthew 2.2), Herod “was troubled,” along with all the city. He consulted with the Jewish religious scholars, who told him that Bethlehem was the prophesied place of the birth of the expected Christ. So Herod sent the Magi there, only to confirm the place and the birth.

The Magi went and adored the Christ Child. But Herod meant only to “destroy him” (Matthew 2.13). Herod could not tolerate any loss of his power. He could not permit even the prophesied Messiah to take anything away from his domination.

This is a sure sign of the demoniac in political power — the utter panic, the immediate desire to hold on to power and wealth, the willingness to “do whatever it takes” to protect that power and wealth, to see all others as threats to one’s own status quo — threats that must be destroyed.

The Magi were warned in a dream to bypass Herod. When the self-absorbed king realized that he had been “stood up” by the Magi, he fell “into a furious rage, and sent and killed all the male children in Bethlehem who were two years old or under” (Matthew 2.16).

This horrific slaughter of infants, while certainly not unprecedented in either the ancient or modern world, is virulently demonic. Such destruction of weak and helpless human life, such harsh violence unleashed upon infants who naturally arouse in human nature feelings of compassion, softness, and protection — such violence cannot be manufactured by human nature alone, no matter how fallen. Such horrific violence must be augmented by the demoniac.

This is true of all mass slaughter and widespread destruction across history. Human nature by itself, as created, no matter how fallen, cannot be so violently horrible, so insanely aggressive toward the image of Christ, without the abetting agency of the antichrist demoniac.

God only creates in goodness — even Herod. But for Herod to massacre 14,000 children, Herod needed to be aided by the spirit of antichrist, which was invoked by his furious rage and a lifetime of power madness.

St Matthew interprets this heartrending calamity as an echo, or “re-appearance,” of an earlier catastrophe that occurred not so far away, but centuries before. It was the leading off of thousands of Jewish prisoners, many of them children, by the Babylonian invaders. The Prophet Jeremiah had written these heartrending lines about this point of departure for the prisoners:

“A voice was heard in Ramah,
wailing and loud lamentation,
Rachel weeping for her children;
she refused to be consoled,
because they are no more.”

Ramah was a point north of Jerusalem where the children were marched far away to Babylon. Rachel was the beloved wife of Jacob, mother to Joseph and Benjamin. She died early in childbirth and was buried near Bethlehem.

The loud lamentation is for all children who’ve been destroyed (“they are no more”) by the insane rage of the spirit of antichrist … for all children destroyed or hurt by so many wars, by school shooters, by the abortion industry, by confinement in refugee camps and detention centers, by abuse, by adult madness, anger and despair.

The Orthodox Church confidently states that all children who are oppressed and destroyed (and all children who repose) go to be with Christ in Paradise (i.e., the “bosom of Abraham”). This is immediate. There is no delay. It is only in the fellowship of Christ that the evils of the antichrist world are resolved, and all wounds are healed.

Nevertheless, Rachel (and the Theotokos) weeps today, as she continues to cherish the Infant Image of the Child Christ, wherever, and in whomever, she beholds Him.

The voice in Ramah has not stopped.

the Magi

Christian tradition says that the Magi, or Wise Men, were scholars and astronomers from Persia. Orthodox hymnody says that they maintained an ancient set of prophecies from Balaam himself, who, many centuries before, had encountered Moses and the Israelites during the Exodus out of Egypt. In that encounter, the non-Israelite said these mysterious words:

I see him, but not now;
I behold him, but not near.
There shall come a star out of Jacob,
and a scepter shall rise out of Israel.
And it shall crush the forehead of Moab
and break down all the sons of tumult
(Numbers 24.17)

By a science and art that is now lost to us, the Magi were able to ascertain, from the study of the stars, that the Son of God was to be born as King of the Jews. They followed “his star” all the way from Persia to Bethlehem. And when they arrived at the Cave, “they fell down and worshiped him” (Matthew 2.11) and presented gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh.

The gold is interpreted as a sign of true Kingship over the world. The frankincense is a sign of the true and only Priesthood. And the myrrh is a sign of the death that would save all mankind, and all creation.

It is amazing that the study of the stars provided the Magi with such expectation.

The Magi were powerful indeed, especially in Persia. But they were not confined or corrupted by this power. Their desire was to study the truth, and to meet the source of all truth, the Word that gives meaning to all words.

It is likely that there was an a wide Wisdom Tradition, spread through the ancient Middle East and the trade routes of the Mediterranean, centered upon the Second Temple of Jerusalem — the Temple constructed after the return of the exiles from Babylon in 516 BC, and stood until its destruction by the Romans in 70 AD. It is beginning to be clear to scholars that the Greek philosophers, especially Pythagoras and Plato, were well aware of this Wisdom Tradition of the Second Temple, and relied upon it heavily. The Hebrew influence was felt in Babylon, and Persia, as well.

This Wisdom Tradition was not mere intellectualism, or the scholarly sophism that we rightly reject as anti-spiritual rationalism today. This Wisdom contemplated deeply upon the mysteries of Creation, and beheld the wonder of the mysticism of the Second Temple.

The coming of the Messiah, with the characteristics of the Son of God as Savior, was the central expectation of this Second Temple mystic Tradition.

It is out of this Tradition that the Magi from Persia knew how to interpret the signs in the night sky with expectation for the Son of God to become the Son of Man.

Also, in this same Wisdom Tradition, the Magi were able to interpret the dream they had received after their adoration of the Infant Christ and their recognition of the Theotokos. From this interpretation, they recognized the demonism of Herod and his mad lust for power, and his murderous designs upon the Christ Child.

So they bypassed Jerusalem, and traveled back to Persia by another way.

Joseph the foster protector

It remains for us to become wise like the Magi and to recognize the Star of Bethlehem, wherever it shines, and it surely shines today, indicating the paths of righteousness wherein lies the way of Christ.

It remains, too, for us to reject and struggle against all the many Herod’s of this world, for there are indeed many. Too many seek power and riches and fall into the demonic rage of self-protection and aggrandizement. Pride is the curse and leprosy of Satan, and much of the world — especially the First World — is infected.

But most of all, it remains for us to follow the poignant example of the Righteous Joseph. Even in old age and as a widower, Joseph patiently and humbly followed the holy guidance of the angels. He protected the utterly dependent Holy Child and Holy Mother. He took them as refugees into the idolatrous land of Egypt. He worked hard for his little family there, to provide for their needs. And when the angel came and said it was safe to return — because the mad king had finally died — then he did so, and returned to Nazareth in Galilee.

None of this would have happened had not Joseph prayed, had he not practiced the ways of righteousness, had he not given himself away in love. It took holiness to be visited by an angel. It took courage to shelter his two charges against the ravenous insanity of Herod.

Above all, Joseph made peace. In his house, he built an oasis of peace in a fallen world of sin and violence. His prayerful faithfulness became a hedgerow of protection against the demonic tide.

Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the children of God.

Yes. Joseph was one of the peacemakers, truly, to foster the Prince of Peace.

It took Joseph, an aged carpenter, to fashion a home that could shelter a young holy girl who is “beyond compare more glorious than the Seraphim” …

… and a Baby Who is God.

The Red Wagon

The Red Wagon

Once upon a time, a young man and woman fell in love, got married, and set up house in a pretty little cottage beside a river.

It was spring, and the sun shone young and bright. The river ran silver like tinsel under a rickety old bridge.

The young lady was planting flowers and setting out her kitchen garden, and her husband was plowing the field across the road behind his horses. She was happy with her home, happy to feel the warm earth in her hands, happy to set down roots in this place for her family and her children who would come. She could see the daisies unfurl and the hollyhocks climb, and the rosemary and thyme and the bushes of mint spread their arms over the stepping stones.

The Spring-sounds of robins and nuthatches played merrily, along with the work-sounds of her husband and Nob and Bob, the drafthorses pushing against their harnesses.

A new sound entered. A squeaking, grating sound, and a lot of panting and skittering. She looked out at the road in front of the cottage, and there was a boy, pulling a mostly-red wagon. A large though very young sheepdog was busy running back and forth from his young master to the sides of the road. The dog and his boy were laughing and singing and keeping time with the sun in Spring.

The creaking rusty wagon didn't seem to mind its labor. It carried a stack of dark red apples, clearly out of season. The young wife walked up to her picket fence, where she met the boy, the sheepdog and the wagon.

The boy stopped and smiled, and the sheepdog wagged his tail. The boy, who was wearing a clean but worn shirt, and dungarees that were torn at the knees, picked up an apple and presented it to the young woman. "Here, this is for you, it's from my tree.”

"Why," she stuttered, not expecting a gift from someone so poor, "thank you." She took it from his smudged hands.

"Try it now," he said, "it won't keep. But it’s the best you'll ever have."

She hesitated for a little. She looked down at the rusty wagon, so dingy that she could barely see the white letters spelling out "Radio Flyer." His hands were grubby, and he looked like he needed a bath.

But his smile was pure. She raised the apple to her lips and bit into the fruit: the cool nectar of everything apple and the Spring blossoms of the orchard, glimmered into her mouth and she was convinced that this was indeed the very best of apples she ever had.

She smiled. She could not resist the temptation to reach out her hand, as the future mother she already was, to comb his hair lightly with her fingers. He blushed, turned aside, and stammered: "I will leave some more here for all of you."

"Please wait," she said, "and let me get you something for your trouble." She turned and ran lightly into the cottage, for a coin or two to give the boy in return for the apple.

But when she returned, he was gone. He was already down the road, far enough not to hear her when she called. She saw him and the dog and the wagon continue on, singing and just as merrily, now halfway across the bridge.

No one used the bridge anymore. On the other side of the river, it seemed to stop all at once, right at the edge of the thick forest where no one lived. The forest was beautiful from this distance, but it looked dark and wild. There was a loneliness that she felt every time she looked that way, and she had no desire to ever cross the bridge to see what was there.

She waited at first for the boy to return. Then she went back to her work in the garden, looking up every so often to watch for the boy and the dog and the wagon.

She went inside to make dinner in the evening. As she set the dutch oven in the fireplace, she heard her husband washing himself before he came in.

"What a funny thing," he said as he came in from the evening, "I saw a little boy coming over the bridge just now."

She rushed out of the house, but only caught a glimpse of the end of the Radio Flyer, the head of the boy and the wagging tail of the dog disappearing around a bend in the road.

There were five more apples, by the gate, in a row.

* * * * * * *

Years passed and summer gleamed on the cottage home, now filled with the happy business of children. One little girl was inventing new rules for hopscotch. Another was fashioning a dress for her doll. A boy was helping his father cut hay for the stock. The youngest, a baby boy, was taking his first toddling steps in the sun, gurgling happily as he teetered in the soft grass.

There is nothing better than a June day that starts in the chilly sapphire dawn, quiet before the children rise, the murmur of reverence at the morning prayers at the flickering candle on the table. Then the day unveils, like a curtain drawn back, onto the horses and the livestock stomping to be fed, the cool morning cleansing breeze that sweeps through the kitchen carrying the scents of open earth and green. The work is hard and hot, but the tiredness is not weariness, and it ends in rest and contentment at the riverside: the husband and wife, now father and mother, wading in the streaming tide with the splashing chatter of children and laughter, always getting young again.

Into one of these summer evenings, by the riverside at the edge of the cottage yard, there came the sound again, the creak of dry metal wheels, and the padding of a now larger dog.

But the boy did not look too different. His clothes were changed, and not for the better. He wore only a thin simple shirt and frayed short pants, and his feet were bare.

The sheepdog was fully grown, but not old enough for dignity. He still leapt about with puppy eagerness to please and expect joy on every face.

He stopped and smiled at the young mother who came to him. The children watched to see if this newcomer would be good at tag and spud and kick-the-can. But he said nothing, but bent down and picked up a dark red apple.

"Won't you come inside for dinner?" she asked, even though the father, who was much more sensible, shook his head in worry and consternation.

The boy finally spoke. "I'm going to cross the bridge today." He bent down again, and counted out five more apples, and left with the dog bounding at his side.

There are moments that are so full of purpose and tomorrow that nothing more should be said. So she didn't. And the boy pulled the wagon away.

* * * * * * *

There are two ways to take Autumn. Some people, like the middle-aged lady in the cottage, took it with a calm happiness. She liked the snap in the air and the smell of wood fire, the crunch of fallen leaves on the ground and the fruit of the harvest all brought in.

The Fall winds, though, sounded melancholy. They blew from out of time, and they made her look on the bridge, across the river: they sighed through the oak and maple branches of yesterday and carried gold portraits of her children still playing tag and swimming at home, and a young husband who still knew how to laugh and sing in the fields. The winds, too, whispered of tomorrows unknown and unreached but still bound to come.

She prayed in the wind, and she chose to offer thanks for the past and hope for the still tomorrow, and she fixed faith to the bridge in her heart.

She looked up. The boy with the wagon was walking toward her down the lane, steadily, on purpose, not afraid. His sheepdog moved gently with him, now dignified in his fully grown stature. The dog no longer skittered like a puppy, but moved rather like a bear, proceeding in a rolling motion.

The sheepdog's face and eyes were covered by white long fur, but the large coal nose and the merry smile expressed a steady joy. He turned his nose into the variable wind, trying to guess its next move. He was a mighty friend of Autumn.

She was not surprised to see the boy. By now, she had started to recognize the rhythm of time, the arrangement of days in a year, and the procession of seasons. Faith and prayer had given her this.

The boy was clad in an old houndstooth jacket, the shabby leather buttons fastened up to his neck. His black beret had migrated off center, and was pitched jauntily to the side.

They smiled together as they met, across the picket fence of the old cottage by the river. "Try it," he said as he held out for her a dark red apple, "they're the best you'll ever have."

She took the fruit and savored its morsel without hesitation. The sweetness carried the substance of what the wind sang, of yesterday and tomorrow and today. She could taste the familiar traces of her place and cottage, the summer days of her babies on the grass, and even the spring morning of the window thrown open to the cool washing breeze.

"It is Time," she whispered, with a heart-rooted shudder, a sweet poignance.

The boy smiled, picked up the handle of his Radio Flyer, and followed the dog.

Almost at the bridge, he stopped by the field, and set another apple down against the fence that didn't seem to have any purpose other than to say "this is mine and no one else's."

He looked up at the stern man, standing beside his proud stuffed barn. The old husband looked, for all the world to see, like a man who's grown up too much, quite beyond liking apples, or even remembering how they taste.

The boy smiled again, and turned toward the road, and crossed the bridge.

The apple remained by the fence. Untried. Untasted.

There are Trolls in the world. Most of them live at the other end of old spooky bridges. This bridge was about to get one, because there is, after all, another way to take the Fall.

* * * * * * *

Trolls think important thoughts and are impatient with children who try to cross their bridges. They dislike the sunlight because they have been informed, by the best informed opinion, mind you, that such light is corrosive and will turn them into stone -- never mind the fact that they have already turned stone for the simple reason that they have turned away from that light.

There was no chance of light today, in the very dark of winter and the year-ending storm of cold and snow. The sun had gone down at noon for the solstice, and night was longest this day.

It was a troll day, a bad weather day that only confirmed troll thoughts for the old wizened Troll living under the far end of the spooky old bridge. He had built himself a shed under the bridge at this end because the thick green pine forest wouldn't let him in. Years ago he had tried to continue on where road had stopped at the end of the bridge, but there was nowhere to go in through the thick preventing hedge of spruce and fir

So he set up a ramshackle wall of sticks and stones between the bridge pilings, and thus he built for himself a miserable bachelor hole, just right for a troll such as he. And God help the soul who ever walked on the bridge, because they'd be stepping over his head and his squat little home and proving how superior they were over him, whoever they may be.

"Everyone's left me," the troll muttered, explaining to himself for the thousandth time why he lived stone-like in a hole, failing to mention, of course, that he was the one who did the leaving.

He recounted his resentments again, the recounting of which was on the schedule for today and everyday and was the only thing he looked forward to.

"They left me and went away to their own places … my fields grew weeds and thistles, and the bugs made work intolerable, and my back ached … no one wants this old piece of dirt so close to the river and by a useless bridge to nowhere and a bunch of rotten trees … and she would not listen, she would not move away to a nice place in town where I could be noticed and take my ease … I've paid my dues and should have come into my own, but she wanted to stay here in this forsaken country spot where nothing happens … she chose her old miserable garden but I was done with dirt and animals and staying put in the same miserable spot … I had things to do and people to meet and places to go and money to make and all I am is a god-forsaken troll."

Neglecting to mention, of course, that it was not God Who did the forsaking.

Which is usually the reason for why trolls exist, or why trolls think they're trolls and turn to stone.

A creaking sound above his head interrupted his happy misery. It was a grating creak of rusty wheels, the heavy padding of a large animal and the light footfall of what he suspected would belong to a boy.

He was right, when he raised his unkempt troll head over the timbers. "Who's that tramping and scraping over my bridge?" roared the troll.

From his substandard point of view, he looked first at boots and massive paws and an ancient toy red wagon, bending under a stack of dark, red apples.

The dark burgundy hue glowed mystically in the drapery of white winter, every wisp of snow in flight bowed and curled toward the Radio Flyer and the shepherds who drew it along.

They stopped. The boy, never aging, garbed in a woolen earflap hat and thick greatcoat, all in gray and turned silver and white on this cold Yule day. The great sheep dog stood now higher than the boy, a massive December bear in long white fur with blue gray markings in his thick topcoat.

He was now a dog of regal joy.

They were not bothered by the snow: the snow stood under them and with them, in procession, and the troll, of course, felt immediately as though he did not belong.

"You! Why do you trespass on my bridge! Why do you come here uninvited! Why do you stick your nose in my business! Why do you bother me!"

"Loneliness," the boy said, without a smile.

"Loneliness," he repeated, and then went on, softly, "and spite in the night, resentment, reproach, regret and repetition … you dug yourself a hole, when I gave you a home across the river."

"You gave me? The nerve ... who are you to tell me how things are in the place I built? Who are you to criticize my choices and my beliefs? I am entitled to my opinions and my hole! I have every right to be me! I am what I am, a God-forsaken troll!"

The sheepdog growled, loud and deep, and the threat was felt on the bridge.

"Stay, Billy," the boy patted his neck, "don't be so gruff."

He turned to the distraught refugee from a frustrated life, who was looking for a phone to hang up with.

"Not so forsaken, it turns out," he smiled and bent down to the old wagon.

"Here, take and eat. They're the best you'll ever have."

It is not true that nothing ever changes, or that old dogs cannot learn new tricks. In Time there are chances and turnings, and occasionally habituated trolls can step long enough out of their holes to do something new.

Or very old.

"I picked this apple a thousand years ago," and the boy's white young hand placed the deep red fruit in the troll's grubby palms.

In the deep winter and still curtain-fall of velvet white, on the bridge between home and the eternal woods, over the mystic river, the troll bit fitfully into the apple.

He tasted fire and cider and stone, laughter at an oaken table, the steaming holy earth delved by ploughshare behind Nob and Bob, and faces, bright faces that called out … and ice-melting springs of vernal rained gracefully into his streaming eyes. He was kneeling now on the bridge, for all the world to see, and gasping at the breaking of an unbreakable, iceberg heart.

Her face, he saw, and his body was riven by grief.

He felt shelter and warmth. Billy stood over him, shading him from the cold, nuzzling his ear.

"There is still Time," he heard the boy whisper.

He looked up. The boy was moving toward the forest hedge. "Come, Billy," he called.

The boy and his dog stood in front of the forest door. A cascade of snow draped the blue-green and black-silver fronds of fir and spruce, hemlock and pine.

The white opaqueness of the snow curtain turned to bright. Whiter, whiter it gleamed and light streamed not from above but from within, as though fire shone from the heart of each snow crystal. It was transfiguration fire, visiting from the feast that never ceases at the fullness of Time, the harvest and authorial joy of apples, sheepdogs, and ex-trolls.

And a boy.

Who, with his dog, was stepping through.

But in the cleft of Light, he paused and turned and smiled at the man.

"Go, there's still Time." He pointed.

* * * * * * *

Children are good at making snowmen, even at the coldest of seasons. And these grandchildren were no exception.

For while their moms and dads were busy preparing a bittersweet feast of Christmas, their snow forts and snowmen, their handcrafted wreaths which showed the jaunty stamp of child labor were lying now on a bed which had been set up in the main room of the cottage, so that she could see and be part of the home she had made.

She could hear the laughter just outside the door. The adults were too hushed and serious, she kept telling them, and she forbade them from silencing the boisterous voices.

She called them in to sing their little carols and even coached them with the words. She smiled at their little performances of Bethlehem plays, and kissed every card and carved cow and sheep and camel.

Suddenly, the noises of play and the voices stopped. The bustle of cooking in the kitchen cleared.

Into the winter cottage entered the old familiar sound of scraping wheels. The frail old woman struggled to rise; her daughters ran to her side and propped pillows behind her back.

The wheels came closer, and the fathers went outside and met the children, who were standing agape at the scene.

A white-haired and bearded old man was laboring with an old toy wagon, stacked with dark red apples.

He wore a snowflocked old woolen coat that swept through the drifts on both sides of his path.

He stopped at the gate.

"May I come in?" he asked, deep and shy, not used to conversation.

The oldest of the four young fathers nodded and opened the gate to the stepping stone path.

A little one called out, with astonishment, "St. Nicholas!"

"No," her father said softly, "not him. Not exactly."

The daughters opened the door. The old man bent down to the wagon, then stepped under the stone lintel, where he stood, wavering in the liminal distance. He had gone as far as he could on his own.

"It's you …" came a soft voice from the bed. "Take off that coat and come …" Her hand opened, her fingers bent toward her palm and her weak smile.

He set down his coat and shuffled forward.

"I'm not the Boy," he stuttered.

"I'm old, but I'm not a troll."

He bent down and smiled.

"This is for you. It's the best you'll ever have."

the Castle and the King (for the Sunday of the Holy Fathers)

Once upon a time, there lived a grand King in a great Castle.

The Castle looked magical, and it probably was, since most people in the valley could not see it very often. It was perched upon the top of a high, steep hill which was difficult to climb and not very convenient. It was so high that it was, more often than not, above the clouds: and the people of the valley had grown so accustomed to the overcast sky that they no longer gave much thought to the Castle, much less the King living there.

Occasionally, on a clear day, the Castle seemed to glow in the blue sky at the top of the hill. Most of the time, this bright image was dismissed as a mirage by the people in the valley.

But once in a while, over the years, some few hardy people would climb the hill. Some of them never returned. Others came back down the hill and into the valley. They tried to describe the Castle and the King. Their descriptions were strange, and were completely beyond the everyday experience of the valley people. They spoke of brightness and seeing the stars clearly, and even the Sun seemed to shine there more cleanly. They tried to describe the trees that whispered songs in the evening wind. They said that the water from the well was cool, and seemed like a cold wine that warmed the heart and refreshed the soul.

The hardest thing that they tried to describe was the King’s voice, his face and his smile. When pressed by the valley people, they tried to sing the song sung by the King on his throne. They could manage a few phrases, but the melody escaped them, like trying to remember music from a dream.

When they tried to speak of the laughter of the King, they could only smile weakly, under tears of warm remembrance.

These people became strange, and were often dismissed by the practical, common-sensical valley people as being just fanciful, given to nonsense and too much imagination.

The people who stayed with the King were generally forgotten in the valley.

The business of the valley was very important to the people of the valley. Something would be very important for a few days or weeks and everyone would be talking about it on their phones and texts. But the next month, these things were forgotten about in favor of other things.

This was just the way things were. The people of the valley had gotten themselves used to this business by practicing some helpful sayings, like “whatever” or “it is what it is” or “that’s the way I am, get used to it.”

But the King, who always took seriously each and every word, could never accept getting “used to it,” and he was quite opposed to the business of the valley. “It is what it is” was definitely not true, and he knew it. “Whatever” was a lie, but only those who knew the truth could understand this. And the most realistic people of the valley were those who had climbed the hill and had been in his Castle.

The King knew that the valley was set below sea level, and a thousand-year event was on the horizon. The business of the valley would soon be interrupted by natural, cataclysmic disaster. The Sea would soon find its way into the valley, and everything that the valley people thought was important and practical would end up submerged, drowned by the tides of time.

So the King decided to call the people away from the business of the valley. He decided to invite the valley people up to his Castle to a great feast, because he knew that the people needed a reason that they could understand for climbing the great Hill.

The Hill that would save them from the flood. 

The Feast would be free of charge. It would be sumptuous and grand. Its menu would be of the highest, richest fare. The music and the celebration would be joyous, and would set hearts high above the sounds of the torrential floods below. The Sun would shine above the clouds. The Trees would sing in the breeze.

And he, the King, would welcome each one with open arms, and he would smile, sing and laugh.

Things would be as they should be.

And it would be right, not merely “whatever,” not just “it is what it is.”

It would be, actually, Peace on Earth.

So the King sent down his representatives, the hardy souls that had climbed up to his Castle and had stayed on. He told them to go down in bright clothing, with musical instruments and to sing with gladness and tell the people of the valley that everything will be all right, that they should come and join the King for a merry feast and stay with him as long as they wanted, and their hearts would be glad.

They walked down the hill and sang into the houses of the valley people. They invited every family and home to climb the hill and enter the Castle of the King for the feast of feasts.

But the business of the valley was busy being important. One family said, “No, we cannot come, for we have things to do. We have concerts to attend and holiday parties to show up to. There are games that must be played and paid for, and holiday shopping is so very busy, we must do our part for the economy. Surely you see that.”

Another family said, “No, we cannot come, for we prefer other more pleasant people to spend our time with. We found a better castle, one that is more comfortable and does not require any hill-climbing. It is where our friends are already going and they play better music there. There are lots of people there and we feel like we’re part of something big. Besides, we would much prefer McDonalds and Applebee’s to the mythical fare of an unknown king. He would probably bore us with his old-fashioned songs that have no guitars, no drums, no exciting lights. Advertise on TV. Get a website. Do some social media. And then we might come, you’ll see.”

Another family said, “No, we cannot come, for we cannot stand hearing about negative things like floods. These have all been dammed up and controlled by our superior technology, so we do not need to worry, you see. The castle is just an old illusion, and the king is only a thing of mythology and coloring books. We would rather be realistic and stick to what we know. Besides, we would rather hear about raising our self-esteem and improving ourselves. Put good feelings on the program, and then we’ll see.”

The representatives, with heavy heart, reported these things to their master.

“No, they do not see,” said the King. “Who has blinded their eyes that they cannot see?” he asked, piteously. “Who has deafened their ears that they cannot hear? Who has deadened their hearts that they cannot turn and come back to me?”

The King, angered and saddened, sent his representatives back down the hill. This time they were to wear black clothes and chant the lays of requiem. They were to go to the places of the marginalized, the lower classes, the irreligious, the halt and the lame, the ones who had never received any invitation, much less a ticket to a Feast at the Castle Royale. 

They staggered in slowly, the halt and the lame in the snow, for poverty and circumstances had weighed them down and had handicapped their way. The King sent servants down to help them, to strengthen the weary knees, to lift up the fainthearted as if on the wings of an eagle, to make their way straight.

For no one, the King had decided, would ever fail to make it to the Castle if he had set one step upon the hillside of ascent. 

“I will lose no one,” the King did say, at the inauguration of the parade of the weak and the poor and the oppressed to his Feast of Feasts.

They all came, and still there were places, empty and waiting. “There are not enough for the Feast to play,” the King did say to his servants. “Go now into the highways and the byways, the brambles and the hedges, and compel them to come in that my house shall be filled.”

And so they left on their last mission, where they are busy today. Compelling, with gentle persuasion, in beauty and in peace. Compelling, those lost in the highways and byways. Calling, those caught up in the hedgerows and brambled paths.

But the King was still not satisfied with His preparations, not yet.He decided that there remained one invitation.“I will go.”

And so He Himself knocks at every door one night, in the eve of the Starbright.

The door sounds in neighborhoods of the valley, in Yeopim and Elizabeth City, in Rocky Hock and Hertford, in Tyner and Roper, in Windsor and Columbia, Nags Head and the Outer Banks. In Edenton.

There is knocking at your door.

“Who is it?” the harried voices clamor from the TV den. “Is it Santa?”

The door opens, and it is the King, but He is disguised as a dirty child in a dusty coat with the colors of the wrong NFL team. “No, I do not want your money.

“I played my pipe for you, and you did not dance. I sang a dirge for you, and you did not cry.”

“But we do not understand,” the families did say, “And we do not have time to go up the hill.”

The hidden King looked deep into the loud, distracted hearts. “So I came Myself, because you have no more time …

“Come. Tomorrow morning …

“I will be there. I will guide you home.”