On the Road

Rest on the Flight”—Luc Olivier Merson 1879

I think I may have sent a cropped version of this painting as a Christmas card once and it has always haunted me. There are many paintings on this subject, and most of them have way too many Italian trees and rocks. This is the real desert, where there is nothing. A place that has tested and tempered the resolve and faith of holy men for thousands of years. The blind sphinx looks skyward, the exhausted Mary dozes in his arms which I hope still hold the day’s heat. Joseph is out cold, and the donkey is trying to get some sustenance out of the few dried grasses.

This is a family that is well and truly down on their luck. Mary is pregnant by someone, not Joseph. Joseph is a carpenter, a useful skill, but not a highly paid or reliable one, and one that relies on a local customer base and word of mouth. The Romans, in an effort to control and tax the people of Judea, have ordered that everyone has to go back to the town where they were born. So Joseph packs up his very pregnant wife on a donkey, probably leaves his tools and certainly his shop behind, and heads for Bethlehem. Since everyone else is on the road, all the motels, campgrounds and etc are full and they end up in a barn. This makes for a charming crèche scene with the animals and the nice clean straw and all, but no one’s choice for a place to have a baby.(Although it is a pretty irresistible piece of PR).

Before Mary has had time to recover from the birth and the visitors and gawkers, it turns out that a revolutionary plot has been uncovered by the Romans and they are killing all Jewish boy babies, just in case. Off the family goes in the middle of the night to hide out in Egypt.

Perhaps they are headed my way, on the road in a decrepit car, no money or food, hiding from creditors or even the law. Maybe they are already here.

Wishing you a bright light for these dark nights, good food, good company in a warm place. Hoping the year to come will bring us all closer to peace in the world and in our hearts.