I promise my brother, who is eating too much goat, to write on Saturday

I promise my brother, who is eating too much goat,
and dreaming of our Vietnamese noodle shop,
bowls of steaming soup brimming over with flat rice noodles,
and rare beef, and anise and garlic, and fermented bean paste
and chili--clearly this food features in my dreams as well,
to write a thoughtful and measured post on Saturday.

I went to Israel for Christmas.
I was actually in Bethlehem Christmas morning.
In writing that sounds much more Biblical than the reality
of the present moment, which involves a big wall and
checkpoints and economic depression and angry Christian
caretakers getting into a broom fight over someone sweeping
someone's else corner in the Church of the Nativity.

Then again. Christmas, from the first, was a time of oppression,
and anger, a time of pain and and jealous kings, massacre and flight.
An unexpected time and place for good news, just like so many troubled
corners of our world today, particularly my dear childhood home of Kenya.
But good news can come unexpectedly, in a moment, in a flash, to the most
downtrodden unhappy out-of-the-way place.
Pray God it comes to us again, here now,
in all the dark places of the world that need the season of Epiphany--
stars and revelations and journeying hard and long to find the one
who can save the world.