Hello and welcome to The Daily Poem. I'm Heidi White, filling in for David Kern, and today is Friday, December 18th. It is exactly one week before the big day, Christmas Day. And today I'm going to read for you a Christmas poem by American poet and author Wendell Berry. If you're a regular listener to the show, you've heard from Wendell Berry

before here. We're big fans of his. He's a living poet. He lives on a farm in Kentucky.

And he is a prolific author. He writes fiction, poetry, and essays, speaking directly into the

American experience. And he had he had, one of the big

themes of his poetry is an ordinary life, lived in community that both creates and reflects

transcendent meaning. And you'll find that for sure in this poem for today. It's called

remembering that it happened once. Remembering that it happened

once, we cannot turn away the thought as we go out cold to our barns toward the long night's end,

that we ourselves are living in the world it happened in when it first happened, that we ourselves,

opening a stall, a latch thrown open countless

times before, might find them breathing there foreknown. The child bedded in straw, the mother

kneeling over him. The husband standing in belief, he scarcely can believe, in light that lights

them from no source we see.

In April morning's light, the air around them joyful as a choir.

We stand with one hand on the door, looking into another world that is this world, the pale daylight coming just as before,

our chores to do, the cattle all awake, our own frozen

breath hanging in front of us, and we are here as we have never been before, cited is not before,

our place holy, although we knew it not. I really love this poem for a few reasons that I'm going to point out today. It tells the

story of a narrator, a farmer, going out to the barn to do the morning chores. And as he walks into

the barn, he opens up a stall. And it occurs to him that a barn was where the Holy Family dwelt on Christmas

morning and that it was in just such a place that you might have encountered the Holy Family.

You might have encountered the Christ child and the straw and Mary and Joseph there together.

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