‘Is that the baby’s name?’
‘Name, ye??,’ said Lover One.
‘Does that name have a meaning, or is it just a name?’
‘Name have a meaning,’ Lover One replied. Then, after a few seconds: ‘Hope.’
The child now stood firmly balanced on the floor, its arms stretched out like unfledged wings. ????? sponged the last of the muck off its skin, whereupon someone emerged from the crowd with an armful of soft offerings. A robe, booties, gloves, all in dusky mauve, all tailored exactly to size. Together, ????? and the gift-bearer, who might have been a grandmother or aunt, began to dress the infant, who tottered and swayed but did not resist. When the job was done, the child was exquisitely smart and adorable, serenely content to be on display. A male, Peter decided. Unbelievable, the craftsmanship that had gone into those minuscule gloves, each finger snug and velvety! Extraordinary, how the child accepted this second skin!
By this time, Peter was no longer squatting; his legs had begun to ache and he’d stood up to stretch them. The baby, wondrously alert, took the measure of all the creatures in the room, an array of virtual replicas of himself. There was only one creature that didn’t fit the picture, only one creature that made no sense in his freshly configured view of the universe. Head tilting back, the child stood arrested, mesmerised by the alien.
?????, noticing her son’s quandary, likewise turned her attention to Peter. ‘?????? ???????????,’ she called across the room.
‘What did she say?’ Peter asked Lover One.
‘Word,’ said Lover One. ‘Word from you.’
‘You mean . . . a speech?’
Lover One inclined his head diplomatically. ‘Few word, many word, any word. Any word you can.’
‘But she’s not . . . she’s not a Jesus Lover, is she?’
‘No,’ conceded Lover One, while ????? made an urgent gesture to speed up Peter’s compliance. ‘On thi?? day, all word are good.’ And he touched Peter’s elbow, which, by Lover One’s standards, was tantamount to a shove.
So there it was: he was an accessory. A bonus performance to enhance the mother’s Big Day. OK, nothing wrong with that. Christianity was used for such purposes all the time. And who knows? – maybe it wasn’t even his status as a pastor that this woman wanted to exploit, but his status as a visitor. He stepped forward. Phrases and themes tumbled around in his brain, but one thing was clear: he wanted this speech to be for the benefit of Lover One, so dignified in his bereavement, as much as for the mother and child. Often in his past ministries, he’d had a sudden insight into a staunch member of his congregation, a member who was constantly declaring the joy of knowing Christ, the bountiful blessings of faith, but who was – Peter would realise in a flash – achingly, inconsolably sad. Jesus Lover One might well be one of those souls.
‘I’ve been asked to speak,’ he said. ‘To a few of you, what I say will have meaning. To most of you, maybe not. One day, I hope to speak your language. But wait – did you hear it? – I just spoke that wonderful word: hope. The name of a feeling, and also the name of this child who has come to live with us today.’
The baby lifted first one boot, then the other, and toppled backwards. His mother caught him smoothly and eased him to the floor, where he sat in apparent thought.
‘Hope is a fragile thing,’ Peter continued, ‘as fragile as a flower. Its fragility makes it easy to sneer at, by people who see life as a dark and difficult ordeal, people who get angry when something they can’t believe in themselves gives comfort to others. They prefer to crush the flower underfoot, as if to say: See how weak this thing is, see how easily it can be destroyed. But, in truth, hope is one of the strongest things in the universe. Empires fall, civilisations vanish into dust, but hope always comes back, pushing up through the ashes, growing from seeds that are invisible and invincible.’
The congregation – if he could be so bold as to call it that – was hushed, as if considering the import of each word, although they must surely be quite lost. He knew he should regard his speech as a kind of music, a brief burst of melody from a foreign guest invited to demonstrate an exotic instrument.
‘The most cherished of hopes, as we all know,’ he said, ‘is a new child. The Bible – the book that some of you love as much as I do – contains many fine stories about the birth of children, including the birth of Jesus, our Lord. But this is not the time and place for me to tell Bible stories. All I will say is that the ancient words of Ecclesiastes have helped me make sense of what I’ve seen in the last few days. Ecclesiastes says: To everything there is a season. There is a time to be born, and a time to die; a time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to plant seeds, and a time to reap. An old person – the mother of Jesus Lover One – has died. That was a very sad thing. A new person – ??????? – has been born today. That is a very happy thing. Let us honour the equal importance of each: in celebrating a new life we remember losing those who’ve left us, and then in the midst of sadness our spirits are lifted as we welcome new life. So, to little ???????, most beautiful and precious gift to our community, I say: welcome!’
He hoped he’d invested the last word with sufficient resonance to signal that this was the end of his speech. Evidently he had: the audience emitted a mass murmur, applauded and waved. Even the baby, catching the prevailing mood, extended his tiny gloves. The room, so hushed in the preceding minutes, was once again filled with cooing and conversation; the people who’d briefly been transformed into an audience turned back into a crowd. Peter bowed and retreated to his former spot against the wall.
For one instant, in the midst of the renewed celebrations that followed, his mind was tickled by a thought of his own baby, growing inside the body of his wife far away. But it was just a thought, and not even a properly formed thought – a half-glimpsed reflection of a thought, which couldn’t compete with all the commotion right in front of him: the brightly dressed crowd, the excited gestures, the unearthly cries, the watchful newborn with its spindly limbs, hero of the moment, king of the day.