Pieces of Coloured Glass - The Donkey

 

                                                                      

 

“There’s a crack in everything. That’s how the light gets in.” (Leonard Cohen, “Anthem”)

 

This was the first quotation that came to my mind upon seeing this nativity figure – though more because of the medium of glass than the donkey itself. I think that glass, which lets the light in and is also so susceptible to cracking, is very special. Stained glass art in particular, with its opacity and transparency, its hardness and fragility, reflects the blend of miraculousness and inadequacy in each individual created thing. The other line that comes to mind is from Percy Bysshe Shelley’s “Adonais,” where he writes that “Life, like a dome of many-coloured glass, stains the white radiance of Eternity, until Death tramples it to fragments.” (Although Shelley states the idea more pessimistically – “Adonais” is, after all, an elegy – this echoes the wonderful quotation from Pastor Kimber’s November 20 blog: “We are here to be eccentric, different, perhaps strange, perhaps merely to add our small piece, our little chunky, chunky selves, to the great mosaic of being.”)

 

Where does the donkey fit in all of this? The Bible does not actually state that Mary rode a donkey to Bethlehem; she may rather have travelled in a cart or some other way. The Bible also doesn’t specify that a donkey was present to worship at the manger, although its presence at its feed trough is both logical and explicitly referenced in Isaiah 1:3 (as Pope Benedict points out in Jesus of Nazareth: The Infancy Narratives). So perhaps the traditional image of the donkey at the manger is compromised, cracked, and also lets the light in. Through it, Jesus’s future arrival in Jerusalem on Palm Sunday shines more clearly; the past also shines through in the prophecy (Zechariah 9:9) that the King of Zion will arrive on donkeyback. Balaam’s donkey in Numbers Book 22 is one of only two talking animals in the Bible; as a messenger of God, it acts as a foil to the other talking animal, the serpent in the Garden of Eden. If our own sweet-faced glass Nativity donkey were to speak, its bray – half honk and half squeaky door – might crack us up (have a listen here if you need a refresher: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MfAmJKx0B1o&ab_channel=WandaKaluza ). And it might bring us special reassurance: if we can’t sing with angelic euphony, it’s okay to bray.

 

God, please give us the energy and strength to be the cracked vessels that you find imperfectly beautiful. Leonard Cohen urged us to “Ring the bells that still can ring. Forget your perfect offering: There is a crack, a crack in everything. That’s how the light gets in.” Please fill us with bells and light, that our cracked and braying voices may rise in praise of you.  Amen.

                                                                                             ----Shannon Brownlee