THE cHRISTMAS LION
1Ì€
Written in 2001 -- just as the world broke. I was a nominal Episcopalian. My site is mikefinleywriter.com now.
2Ě€
3Ì€
I was at church, to see my son play a wise man in the Christmas pageant. But it was a phrase from the Old Testament reading, Isaiah 35 1:10, that caught my ear. It is a prophecy of a better place and time: The wilderness and the solitary place shall be glad for them; and the desert shall rejoice, and blossom as the rose.... No lion shall be there, nor any ravenous beast shall go up thereon, it shall not be found there; but the redeemed shall walk there. I hadn't thought about lions in a while. When I was a teenager I worked in a roadside zoo that had some. My main recollection is of their power, how their roaring shook the air around them for hundreds of yards. You can't imagine this sound, or you can only under-imagine it. When it happens, it is louder, and deeper, and more unignorable than your imagination wants it to be. And if that is just its voice, imagine what the sudden presence of a lion meant in those days. You could be arguing with your worst enemy. You could have drawn swords and about to do one another in. Then 4Ě€
suddenly, there is the lion, and the two of you unite without a thought. So disruptive, so powerful, so unnerving was the lion in your midst, that you hastily rearranged the terms of your universe to deal with it. When I was in college, taking philosophy, I wrote a paper in which I wished dinosaurs still roamed the earth. If these terrifying creatures still lived among us, able to crush us, devour us, sweep us away at whim, we would ourselves be a different species -- more nervous, less arrogant, and probably a good deal more social. It would be a good thing for nature to supply such a visual lesson on where we fit in the mosaic of life. Same with lions. They rend, they tear, they eat you up. What a horror that is for seemingly rational people, to be nothing more than food for some stronger, dismissive creature. I remember how unnerved I was by the movie Jaws when it came out. The lesson Spielberg kept making was that people believe they have destinies, but nature's red eye understands us primarily as protein. O tempora, o mores.
5Ě€
I recall a passage from the story of Samson, where the impetuous strongman encounters a lion in the desert, and kills it with his bare hands. My generation has seen so many Tarzan movies that it is hard to recapture the excitement people must have felt when this story was new, for a mere man to undo that which has undone so many shepherds, children, and unwary travelers. Imagine the shiver down your spine as you imagine a human so capable he can stand up to such a creature, blast back to its blast, and impossibly, triumph over it. If such a thing is possible, what else is possible? Some other old memory of mine -- I don't remember if it was Samson or Hercules or Gilgamesh, but one of those fellows came upon a lion's carcass, and inside found honey. Bees had made a hive of the bleached skull. And the discovery fulfilled a prophecy that there would be "honey in the head." From the direst violence sprang the sweetness of peace. In Psalm 7, and later, in the account of Job, the singer describes God himself as a fierce predator: 6Ě€
Lest he tear my soul like a lion, rending it in pieces, while there is none to deliver. Thou huntest me as a fierce lion: and again thou shewest thyself marvellous upon me. This was a god to get on the good side of. And now, up on the steps of the sacristy, I see the kids of the parish in their shepherd get-ups of bathrobe and flipflops, guarding their flocks against the mysteries of night. When up in the sky is a nine year old angel, unable to hide her grin, there to announce the good news. And the animals in the stable, gathered by the manger, have their own hopes of the messiah -- redemption from the lion perhaps chief of these. For how can there be happiness when a monster rules the world, unkillable and unnegotiable? And I think of the wise men, one of them my son, wearing actual Saudi robes brought back from a parishioner in the 1930s, traveling across the trekless sands of India and Persia, drawn by a star, and protected from marauding lions by royal bodyguards. 7Ě€
And I made up a story in my mind, about a Christmas lion, who followed the magi following the star, lured out of his wilderness by the suggestion of something new. Picture him, sauntering a distance from the caravan, head down, intent on the path, making his way from night to night under a pinpricked sky, his slightest exhalation an ominous groan. Uncomprehending but resolved, he traces the arc of a star. Now imagine this creature as part of the church pageant, kneeling at the manger with his own present to the newborn king -- the sacrifice of violence, the renunciation of death. "And the lion shall lie down with the lamb," is one of those prophecies no one really believes. D. H. Lawrence said a lion could lie down with the lamb, but the lamb would be inside the lion. Or as we say today, trust, but verify. What happens to the lion? Toothless and declawed, he bears the brunt of everyone who ever had a run-in with lions, everyone who lost a loved one to the beasts. The lion becomes a christ himself, suffering in peace the sins of pentup years. 8Ě€
Like the lion we read about in the Kabul zoo, long since tamed, like Samson, behind bars, horribly wounded by a hand grenade, venting his forgotten power in roar after roar to the God that forsook him. People who watched the war without shedding a tear were moved by the mangled animal, bellowing beyond an insensible world. Was ever greater proof of our fall than this, the fragging of a king? In James Dickey's poem "The Heaven of Animals," he acknowledges that nature is fallen, but suggests that innocence and peace are deeper than we imagine. In animal heaven, predator and prey live together forever, each one beautiful in its way, torn to death one moment, and restored to life the next. In a sovereign floating of joy. And those that are hunted Know this as their life, Their reward: to walk Under such trees in full knowledge Of what is in glory above them, 9Ě€
And to feel no fear, But acceptance, compliance. Fulfilling themselves without pain I see the lion is walking tonight from ridge to ridge and tree to tree. I hear his breath roll down from the mountains. I hear him shake the night with his thunder. But what do I do with him, take him up the Golgotha hill, have him kill and eat the Romans and drag Jesus to safety by the scruff? That's what I used to think about, when that was me in the Christmas pageant. The lion from heaven would make it all right. The irresistible, the unchallengeable, the divine interference. Better than any movie. It won't happen. Today there will be no untoward blood, no killing. The real story is the only story, the one taking place in front of us. The kids are telling it in their tablecloths and sneakers, with halting step and faltering voice. Ordinary people in humble circumstances -- our only lion the heart of hope that beats in every one. ` 10
Copyright (c) 2001 by Kraken Press
` 11