Inspired by the Nativity

"I desire mercy, and not sacrifice."

"Jesus the Nazarene"

Humanity today keeps feast for the beginning of the second half of the twentieth century, and bids farewell to the first half.

And the Christian nation wills to baptize this dividing epoch with displays of sanctification, and compassionate hearts call these people to devotion and to worship.

So the candles are lit, the incense is burned, the flowers are scattered,

and the echoes of prayers and bells answer one another, and the ringing of strings and brass bursts forth.

They said: It is the Holy Year! And the throats of the worshippers were rent with a fervor the like of which people have never yet seen.

That is because this man has discovered the secret of annihilating worlds, and here he is, carousing and bellowing, threatening to burn this earth...

That is, to burn his own house, his child, and himself!

*

Alas for humanity — the folly of this man!

In his hands lies the secret of bringing distances near, of making the waters gush forth, of digging canals, of raising dams in a few counted hours. Between his palms is the secret of drawing lights out of the very heart of darkness, of breathing life into the parched sands, of commanding the scorching winds so that they become coolness and peace.

In his brain is the secret of turning frost into warmth, and equatorial heat into pleasant, dewy shade.

In your hand, O man, is a power of creation bestowed on you by One great and tender, who gave it you that you might live and let others live.

Since a distant age this mind — God's greatest gift — has been working, conscious and striving, inheriting and bequeathing; and ever since God opened upon this mind, and it kindled the first spark and carved the first pick and cast the first wheel, humanity has enjoyed the fruits of those labors — cheap, within reach, distributed in measures that are almost justice itself.

*

And God opened upon the mind as He had never opened before, and it made with science its magnificent leap — to give drink to all people, to build for all people, to delight all people with the joys of these wondrous worlds. But greed put out its horns, and science was monopolized! The mind was monopolized — God's gift to the white, the red, and the yellow, to freemen and to slaves — and it became the property of a chosen few who enjoy the splendid product at their ease. And the struggle began — over the produce of the mind — between this criminal few and the hundreds of millions who writhe, hungry, filthy, deprived.

*

O man: do not beat your breast to stop the wars.

Neither the fervor of prayer, nor the fragrance of incense, nor the moaning of the bells will avail any longer.

O you who strive in the cause of peace — there before you is the serpent's head.

There before you are misery, and drudgery, and insufficient food, and the filthy bed.

There before you are the stirring spectacles! A handful of the surfeited, amusing themselves, dancing — and millions of outcasts, in whose ribs envy boils and in whose blood hatred seethes.

And if anything is to be marveled at, it is that all this has not yet exploded.

*

And we keep feast for the Nazarene? For the Lord of social justice?

How petty these lies!

How base these games!

*

Who knows? Will social justice begin here, in the little country, Lebanon?

Will the ether broadcast "the beauty of deeds" as, in the days of UNESCO, it broadcast "the beauty of words"?

Is there no guide? Is there no leader?

Who knows?