centre of the universe - the dreaming: One more sleep

12/24/2007: "One more sleep" You who have had children, think of this - a woman labouring, far from home, in a stable.

Wives then were girls - usually in their early teens.

I wonder, did the same angel who told her she would bear Christ the lord also mention about water breaking and contractions and pain management? I wonder, her in a foreign place, did she have a midwife? Had she learned from her sisters and her aunts and her mother about childbirth? What was her husband doing through all this? Arranging the hay? Boiling water over a fire out in the barnyard? Running back to the Inn, through the streets, looking for someone to help his wife in her labour?

Who held her hand? Who held water to her lips? Who laid that baby on her breast, took the delivered placenta and buried it? Who tied the cord with a strip of leather? Who swaddled the child? Did they sweep sawdust and straw over the blood? Did Joseph kick the dogs out of the way as they tried to gobble up the placenta?

Which rabbi blessed the child? Whose wife cleaned the blood from Mary's thighs? What woman gave her lavendar leaves soaked in oil, tied in a piece of cloth, to hold against the tear in her perineum? Did the Innkeeper give her honey and fruit to heal her?

The second-greatest miracle happened before the birth of Jesus.

Mary became a mother. In a stable, by herself, with only a bright star and a choir of angels high above, chanting 'push, Mary; push!'

"Christmas Eve Eve Day" "Help! Help! I'm in a box!"

For on this day two thousand years ago, a woman laboured/Let all women be blessed

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