Today Lil’ E and I walked to the library to return some books, and while weaving our way through the neighborhood, he said, “Look, mama, it’s baby Jesus!”

“Where?”, I challenged, sure he didn’t know what he meant.

My gaze followed his pointed finger, and sure enough, there was a nativity scene etched in a holiday flag on some one’s porch.

I don’t want to over-spiritualize the fact that my 2 1/2 year old pointed this out, yet I felt in some small way like he was reminding me. He has the heart of a child, one that picks up on special new concepts with incredible clarity. I could be cynical and roll my eyes that I’ve indoctrinated my toddler with the image of a curly haired, blond baby laying on hay as being JESUS, or that baby JESUS is now right there in line with all the other holiday idols he points out on our walks- Santa Claus, Snowman, so on. But I’d rather focus (believe?) that the true message of Christmas has penetrated his impressionable mind, and even that somewhere inside where he is eternal connected with the idea of this baby he hears about when we sing, “Away in a Manger” at bedtime lately.

“Nativity” Poem by Li-Young Lee

In the dark, a child might ask, What is the world?
just to hear his sister
promise, An unfinished wing of heaven,
just to hear his brother say,
A house inside a house,
but most of all to hear his mother answer,
One more song, then you go to sleep.

How could anyone in that bed guess
the question finds its beginning
in the answer long growing
inside the one who asked, that restless boy,
the night’s darling?

Later, a man lying awake,
he might ask it again,
just to hear the silence
charge him, This night
arching over your sleepless wondering,

this night, the near ground,
every reaching-out-to overreaches,

just to remind himself
out of what little earth and duration,
out of what immense good-bye,

each must make a safe place of his heart,
before so strange and wild a guest
as God approaches.

To continue your spiritual reflection, listen.