by Laurie Klein
Black sheep? Moi? Oh yes: In childhood I cradled my stuffed counterpart, complete with music box. During adolescence I perched it atop the desk handed down from my mother.
Seven decades later, it sits near my keyboard, flop ears and button eyes cocked my way.
Twist the oval brass ring in its belly and the song still plays, almost as if time runs backward and my Mom croons the lullaby words of Brahms. I remember one night, an insecure new mama myself, I asked to hear it again, her voice by then crackly with age.
Sleepyhead, close your eyes.
Mother’s right here beside you.
Do we ever outgrow the childlike longing to be held? Rescued?
Re-wind with me . . .
to a distant, long-ago night. A swaddled infant’s gaze locks on his mother’s brimming eyes.
Perhaps Mary sings:
Guardian angels are near,
So sleep on, with no fear.
From starlit Bethlehem, slip further back in time. A month will do. Picture slopes and valleys partially blanketed in wool, as if fallen clouds rest on the earth. These sheep are specifically raised for temple sacrifice.
And King David’s descendants keep watch.
Farther afield, a grizzled shepherd bows over a feed trough. He swaddles a flailing newborn lamb. The birth rags will protect spindly new legs from harm. Little eyes close, the damp body nestled in warmth.
Does the shepherd pipe a tune?
I’ll protect you from harm,
You will wake in my arms.
What of this motherless lamb? And that ewe, over yonder, grieving over a stillborn body?
How gently the shepherd nudges the bereaved mother aside. How painstakingly he bathes the orphan in the dead lamb’s placental blood.
And then, how wondrous, the milk of recognition, the miracle of adoption!
From these hills we can look toward Bethlehem or, five miles north, toward Jerusalem; from incarnation to eventual crucifixion.
Among these grasslands hundreds and hundreds of lambs were once raised for twice daily sacrifices in the temple. Thousands more met the priestly blade at Passover. BUT . . .
. . . before that feast of remembrance, each household brought their best lamb into their home for several days. Hand-fed it. Treated it as family. Maybe the children named it.
Everyone knew that when they presented their gift to the priest, he would ask them this: “Do you love this lamb?”
Spotless, cherished lambs led to the temple.
My threadbare black sheep on my desk.
Heaven’s Lamb—who loves us.
Now and forever NOEL, noel, noel . . .
What sacrifice might Love ask you to make this Christmas?
Black sheep, white sheep: Photo by Megan Johnston on Unsplash
Close-up, white sheep Photo by Sam Carter on Unsplash
Lamb: Photo by Bill Fairs on Unsplash