The Presentation in the Temple

A meditation

Come into the temple with them. They have walked up from Bethlehem with a baby forty days old and two doves for the offering — the poor man's offering, because that is what they could afford. Nobody has announced them. They are just another couple at the gate.

But look who is waiting. An old man in a rose-coloured robe, so old that he has covered his hands with a cloth before he dares to touch the child. He has been in this temple all his life, waiting for one thing, and he was told he would not die until he saw it. And now she is handing it to him.

Watch the handing over. Her arms are still out. His are just closing. And the child — look at the child — is reaching back toward his mother, the way any baby does when a stranger takes him. For one moment he is between them, held by neither, and that is the whole of what is happening here: she is giving him up, because that is what the law asks, and the law is only the shape that God's asking takes.

Behind her Joseph has raised his hands. Behind him old Anna is unrolling a scroll — she has something to say too, and she will say it to everyone who passes for the rest of the day.

Stay near the old man. Simeon holds the child, and he will say what he has waited a lifetime to say: *now let your servant go.* He asked for nothing else. He obeyed, and waited, and it came. Let him teach you how to wait without giving up — and how to hand over what you love when it is asked of you, with your arms still out, the way she does.