Myrrh for the Dead

     This is how Jesus the Christ came to be born; it rambles a bit and anachronisms abound, nevertheless it remains something like the true story. At least I believe it to be so. It is the story as I heard it told. It begins – not, as others have told it, in the northern hillside village of Nazareth, but in small, little Bethlehem, a city of fog and shadow, a city in the shadow of death. A tenebrous city with rubbled streets below your feet and the sound of military helicopters over your head. The doctors were dead, the hospital bombed out. The schools were closed – burned down. It begins with hunger and deprivation. It begins with Joseph living and working in Bethlehem.

    Every morning Joe put on his work clothes – heavy denim pants, steel toed boots, and a plain t-shirt. Over these he put on his protective equipment – durable work gloves, a hard hat, and a bright orange and reflective orange and silver safety vest. He worked as part of crew clearing the streets of bombed out buildings. He filled wheelbarrows with chunks of broken concrete and twisted bands of rebar and hauled them to a municipal dump truck which would haul it all out of the city to a dump site at the outskirts of town. The work continued despite the occasional burst of nearby gunfire. The bombed out buildings were slowly cleared even as violent revolutionary groups clashed with government forces, bringing down another building in explosions of dust and smoke and fire.

    Grinning death head gunships flew through the air with their spectral shadows trailing below. Blackwater gunmen, backed by free-market robber barons and commercial advertising agents in the United States, prowled the smoldering rubble in search of misguided martyrs whose pursuit of apocalyptic ecstasy by way of explosive detonation, had chained the weight of nightmare around the neck of the whole world. It was new technology for the same old conflicts. People die the way they always have – screaming in pools of blood and gore, suffocating under the ruble – dehydrated or starved to death. It’s a new war; it’s the same war. Death is death.

    He wore a mask and a scarf tied around his face to keep the dust and ash from his nose and mouth but smoke burned his eyes as he worked to clear the streets. Blinded and lost in the chaos created by the grasping militants with their demands for vengeance and honor; the shadow of death stretched long across the land. There were days when he worked from daybreak to midnight, excavating the ruins and the rubble by bright klieg lights powered by portable generators.

    Joe moved heaps of concrete and brick, sorting through the detritus of a dying city. Amongst the debris he found the cast off trash of a displaced society – plastic coke bottles, chips of china, a shattered Nokia cell phone, sandwich wrappers, and the like. Also among the debris and rubble were the more gruesome remains of cast off members of society, human remains – sometimes just teeth or perhaps the bones of a severed hand. Sometimes he found crushed corpses that were taken to the medical facility to be identified. If they could be identified. Some of those bodies were so mangled they hardly looked human any more.

    As gruesome and noisome as it was, Joseph appreciated the work. So many were unemployed and desperate. He knew he was fortunate. But he was concerned with his excavating role. The daily destruction was dangerous and people were dying all around. Bethlehem, like all cities, had been built on heaps of ruins. Digging down through the rubble he and his coworkers discovered Arab ruins heaped atop the ruins of Christian Crusaders, Turks, Mongols, Greeks, Egyptians, further and further back the deeper they delved. Winding alleys horizontally through the city, and vertically down through history, down to the Bronze Age foundations of abandoned and forgotten structures.

    He’d grown up with the stories his grandfather Bartolo told him of ancient cities swallowed overnight by the sands of the desert. Those fabulous tales fascinated and amused him as a boy but they seemed less fantastic these days. He’d seen enough instant destruction to know the truth. He’d seen military helicopters dropping sulfuric acid on populated areas. He’d taken shelter as missiles exploded overhead. He’d carried his gas mask with him everywhere in case of attack. And he’d heard the shouts and screams of fathers and mothers, children crying, cursing Herod’s administration. Cursing King Herod. Cursing the far away Romans, and the Americans too – selling their weapons and munitions to anyone with cash enough to buy. Cursing the suicidal, mad-bomber Zealots. Cursing and abusing God, even, in their anger and their despair.

    But even in that land of death and struggle, life went on as it always had. Their children continued to go to school – though the school house had been abandoned after a tank had driven through the wall and exploded. They met in the basement of the Orthodox church. People continued to eat and drink, enjoying meager festival feasts and humble birthday parties, eating and drinking together when and where they could. Weddings were celebrated and divorces were mourned. Life went on. Though surrounded on all sides by the looming shadow of death, life went on. And Joe was engaged to marry a girl from the neighborhood. Mary.

    But rumors began to circulate that Mary was already pregnant. People talk; stories spread but Joe refused to believe the gossip. He trusted his fiancée. He believed her to be as honest and true as himself. But as the rumors persisted his confidence wavered and he confronted her directly. “Is it true, Mary? Are you pregnant?” And with a simple, silent nod she confirmed the worst of his fears. Chilled the warmth of his heart. Still, whatever disgrace he felt, he was a young man of mature character and didn’t want her to be subjected to any further shame or public humiliation. Life was hard enough here. He intended to break off the engagement quietly. Secretly without the whole neighborhood being up in her business. Or his.

    Joe was awakened in the night by the sound of gunfire and explosions – not far off in the distance, but somewhere nearby. There were coordinated rebel attacks on the munitions factory and the state owned pig farm. Because he couldn’t get back to sleep, he got up from his bed and opened the window above his bed to look into the street.

    But he closed it almost immediately. He could hear the shouts of rebel commanders and the screams of wounded soldiers. The acrid smoke choked him before he could get it closed and he coughed for several minutes. He stood at the window observing the thick clouds of billowing smoke illuminated by illuminati search lights sweeping back and forth across the sky in long, lugubrious arcs.

    One of the search lights swept across the face of Joe’s apartment complex and the light through the window blinded him. He flinched and stumbled backwards, throwing his arms in front of his face to block out the blinding light. When he blinked back from the darkness he saw a stranger in his room standing among the illuminated floating dust particles. He was tall and thin, nearly gaunt, but his face still held an ethereal fascination as if he were glowing with an inward radiation.

    “This is a dream,” Joe said. “This is a dream. A strange and terrible dream.”

    “Think of it as a dream if you like,” the stranger said, “but you must remember all of what I am about to tell you when you awaken in the morning.”

    “I will remember,” Joe said. “I will remember what you tell me.”

    “It is very important,” the stranger said.

    “I understand,” Joe affirmed. “I will remember. Every word.”

    “Good. Now Joseph, you must not be afraid to take Mary as your wife. It is true that she is pregnant, but it is no ordinary conception. This is a virginal conception through the Holy Spirit of God. Definite or indefinite, it is the same spirit. And the spirit is sent and life is created.”

    “But that’s…”

    “This is what the ancient prophet promised: Behold the virgin shall conceive and bear a son…”

    “But that’s not…”

    “Do not interrupt me, Joseph. This is a theological truth – by the gift and grace of God she shall conceive and bear a son called Emmanuel.”

    “God with us,” Joe sighed.

    “God with us,” the messenger affirmed. “But you will call him Yeshu, for he will be the one to save his people from the sickness of their sins”

    There was another shout from the streets below as the rebels pressed their advantage and surged into the streets pushing the faceless forces of the Herodian riot strike teams back. Another furious round of gunfire erupted and the Illuminati searchlights were extinguished and the night was dark once more. He knew there would be more work tomorrow clearing the streets around the munitions plant and hauling away the unclean carcasses of dead hogs from the state pig farm. Joe awoke on the floor, naked and shivering in the cold. The heat was off again. The power was out. He rose up from the floor and looked out the window. It was nearly dawn but no birds were singing.

    And when the time was fulfilled, the boy was born in the normal way of things. Even in the midst of death there was life. The Lord, most mighty, holy and most merciful, delivered him to them through the bitter pains of death into newborn life. Life went on.

    Some time after this, King Herod was on the balcony of his bed chambers in the palace within the City of Lights and Murder, snorting Adderall and shouting about the vermin that were infecting and polluting the blood of the country when the strangers from the east arrived. “The blood is the life!” he shouted through his electronically amplified bull horn. “But they are destroying the purity of our lives by diluting the purity of our blood. Rapists and murderers. Drug fiends and half breed witches.”

    The people in the street knew that he wasn’t really a Jew himself; they knew him for the Edomite outsider that he was. Half-Jew at best. He was a shifty man, a querulous alienator of fathers and sons. He never began a single confession, only multiplied confrontations, projecting himself and his woes upon the world around him. “This is our profession of faith: the libtards are out to destroy our history and culture. Illegal immigrant are crossing the borders to get public welfare and the Parthians and the Nabataens are threatening to invade again.” His ancestors may have converted to Judaism, but the people had no illusions of his own personal piety. And they accepted him as their king in name only, only because they were forced to do so by their far-distant, Roman overlords. Few spoke out against him. To do so was death.

    He was still on the balcony raving into his bullhorn when the astrologers arrived.

    Herod the multivalent opportunist put on a mask to receive them. He was obsequious with Caesar and preening with dignitaries of the surrounding nations. He was reverent and pious when dealing with the temple priests and threatening with the members of his family. With the foreign magi – from some shithole country to the east – he was smarmy and smooth talking.

    “We are humble astrologers, my lord,” they said as they introduced themselves to the King. “Practitioners of Chaldean wisdom, scholars and researchers from the Oriental Institute for Full Brain Potential and the appointed envoys of our respective nations. We have traveled, at great risk and great expense, across the sands, following for these many months, a newly observed star. Consulting the ancient texts and lore, we have determined that this novel star is the star of a newly born king of the Jews, and we have come to give him due homage and awe. We know that this is strange and difficult to believe, but we are amiable and honest and trust that you can tell us where he has been born.”

    “I agree that what you’ve told me is strange,” King Herod said to the members of the OIFBP, gripping the arms of his throne until his knuckles turned white. “But the question I have is this: Is it strange enough to be true?” he grinned and waved nonchalantly. The wise men began to speak all at once filling the chamber with their overlapping foreign languages. “No. No. No,” he interrupted them. “Let me consult with my own advisors and religious experts. They will know what to tell me. And then I will know what to tell you.”

    There was argument among the scribes. You know the expression: Two Jews – Three Opinions. They read from their scrolls and consulted the elders – each of which provided a variety of voice and explanations. Multiple version of every position and more answers than participants. But after the arguments flared and died and flared and died again, they returned to the king with an answer.

    “The durations of life are dependent upon the constellations, my Lord, and anyone who knows how to calculate the astronomical movement of constellations and does not do so, does not take notice of the work of God...”

    “Get to the point!” he shouted at them through his bullhorn.

    “But tell them this,” stammered the representative of the scribal union, “from the words of the prophet: ‘And you, Beit-Lechem in the land of Y’hudah are by no means the least among the rulers of Y’hudah for from you will come a Ruler who will shepherd my people, Israel.’ That is the answer you required.”

    But King Herod had other plans. “Only I can fix the problems that plague our country. Not some newborn nobody from some little town in nowhere,” he mused. So he told the emissaries from the OIFBP, “Go and find this child in Bethlehem,” he told the astrologers, “but come back after and tell me where, so that I can give him my respects and gifts as well.”

    All of Jerusalem trembled as the Magi departed. They knew enough of Herod’s raging.

    The traveling members of the OIFBP parked their dusty VW van on the street outside the two story brick house where Joseph’s family lived in Bethlehem. Joseph lived there with his brother Sava, his cousin Tavish, Tavish’s wife and their three children, as well as his grandmother Shera. There had been others in the house with them before, all of them crowded into the small building. His grandfather Bartolo had died a little more than a year before of pneumonia and his father and mother, Jacob and Lissa had been killed in an explosion three months ago. They were gone, but the house felt even more crowded now, with the memories of their laughter and songs still lingering heavily in every room.

    The visiting magi knocked on the door of house. Sava opened the door cautiously and, after a brief and somewhat confused explanation of their presence, ushered them in. He scanned up and down the darkened street for police patrols and overhead for Herod’s surveillance drones.

    “This is the child of whom we have read,” said the astrologers when they saw the infant lying in a makeshift crib – Joseph’s tool chest, emptied of hammers and sockets and filled with blankets and a somewhat ragged stuffed rabbit. “This is the one.”

    “I have brought him gold,” The first of the visitors said, handing Joseph two small coins. “It is not much, I am sorry. We are humble scholars, not aristocracy. Not kings. But may this be the first tokens of his increasing kingdom.”

    “I have brought him frankincense from Ubar” said the second, “the ‘Atlantis of the sands,’ the City of towers, lofty porcelain and gold towers – one of those legendary lost cities of the Arabian deserts. This bottle of perfume has been preserved since before that fabled city’s disappearance.” He placed the vial into Mary’s hands.

    Then the third and eldest of the visitors stepped forward, slowly. He haltingly lowered himself to his knees and laid his fragile body prone on the floor and placed a small wooden box before the boy. “And I have brought myrrh. Myrrh for the dead.”

    Joseph, Mary, and the extended family gathered around gasped but said nothing.

    Joseph’s family insisted that their guests stay the night and to share a meal. Shera cooked up some rice and a bit of goat. Tavish’s wife brought out the last of the baklava she’d made a week ago. A desperate and rare dessert made with honey she’d taken from a bee hive she found in the remains of the burned out school building. The travelers themselves shared what they had, some dried figs and almonds. After securing the blackout curtains over the windows, they lit a kerosene lantern and sang the Hallel as a blessing for the food, the family, and their joyful fellowship.

    The next day, early, well before dawn, the astrologers loaded back into their van. “We must go now,” they insisted. Shera began to insist that they stay as their guests for another day, but Joseph interrupted. “No,” he said. “They have to go. And Mary and I must go too. We must flee.”

    “You have had the dream too?” one of the astounded magi said to him. Joseph looked at the faces of his family, lingering long with Mary’s eyes, and then said to the astrologer. “Yes. Warned in a dream.”

    Later, after the scholars were gone, Tavish brought out a locked metal box and showed it to Joseph. He took a key from his pocket and unlocked it. Inside was a .38 snub-nosed revolver. He handed the gun to Joseph. “Take it, Joe. You’re going to need it,” Tavish said. Joseph considered the weapon Tavish had extended to him. He took it, rolled the empty chamber, and snapped the revolver closed. Then looked from the gun to his wife. She said nothing, only looked away. Joseph turned back to his cousin and returned the gun. “What if I’m caught with it?” he asked. “Besides, I wouldn’t know what to do with it anyway.”

    “It’s easy,” his cousin said shoving the gun back to him again. “Just point and shoot. Bang. The bad guy falls down dead. Simple.”

    “It’s never simple. Nothing ever is.” Joe said. “No. I don’t want the gun.” He turned then to his wife.

    “Mary, we’ve gotta’ go. Tonight. We can’t take my motorcycle, not with the baby. But I can sell it for cash. I won’t get much for it. Not nearly what I paid for it. Tavish offered me eight hundred. It’s a loss, but it’s enough to get us a couple of bus tickets for Egypt. We can be there by tomorrow morning. Our ancestors wouldn’t hesitate to pick up and go. They were nomads. Bedouins, wandering with their flocks and herds, landless and homeless. We can be like them. We’ll make a home on the road. Wherever we are, you, me, and the boy, that’s home.”

    “Oh, Joseph, Joseph,” Mary whispered. “There should have been a life for us here. You should have been the one to build us a house, a home. Now there is nothing, and we’re about to leave it all.”

    “We’ll be like our fathers in the desert, Mare, living in tents and not houses. Taking shelter where we can, always on the move. This is how they lived. This is how we can live again. But you are my champion, Mary. My leader. I can’t do it, I can’t go without you and the boy. And we have to go. Tonight. Now.” She nodded and gathered up the child.

    Joseph threw on his leather, motorcycle jacket. A patch on the shoulder of the jacket displayed a screaming skull and the words, “Terror of Demons.” He kept their passports and travel permits in a purse inside his jacket, ready to display them for the demanding Roman authorities. Mary wrapped the baby in a wool blanket and put on her own coat.

    “I’m not okay with this,” Tavish said again. “I don’t like you going. And I don’t like you going unarmed.”

    “We’ve been over this,” Joseph said. “Acquire the spirit of peace and thousands around you will be saved.”

    “But I’m definitely not at peace about this.”

    “That’s fine,” Joseph said. “We’re going.”

    “That’s fine! That’s fine!” Tavish huffed. “Fine. Save your wife and your boy. You’re saving the world.” Joseph grinned. “Go on. Get out of here,” Tavish said as he walked them to the door.

    Behind them as they fled was smoke on the city like a funeral shroud, the moon indistinguishable through the smoke. Heat waves rippled the cool night air. The smell of burning rubble, and plastic followed them – along with the stench of burning flesh. Innocent bodies dissolving like fat in the sun. Clouds of dust rising and the roar of converging military vehicles. They could hear the screams as they stepped up into the bus.

    “We are abandoned. We are destroyed,” Joseph thought. But he pushed away those thoughts and prayed. A helicopter roared overhead.