Michael Manning is the eighth Manx Bard.

Each month, Michael will be sharing one of his poems with us, and letting us know some of the thoughts and ideas that inspired it.

Refugees, a brutal military power bent on ruthless occupation, poverty and desperation and confusion, unsettling religious dreams and visions, the senseless slaughter of innocents: the Christmas story in scripture is far removed from the Victoriana of carols, trees and cards.

You can find it in the Bible, in Matthew chapters 1-2 and Luke chapter 2.

I love the traditions around Christmas, Victorian or otherwise, and it is one of the great feasts of the church.

My faith as a Christian is deeply woven into my poetry.

I find poetry a powerful way of expressing, challenging and questioning faith and its place in the world.

The incarnation, the mystery of God being born as Jesus, is one of the wondrous marks of Christianity.

It defied everyone’s conceptions of who God was in the ancient world, and I suspect it remains a surprise and a challenge to people of every age.

Here is God, tiny and vulnerable, born in poverty in a land under occupation, seen and welcomed only by those on the margins.

It was so shocking that most people missed or dismissed it, full of the fear and disappointment that comes when God doesn’t conform to our expectations.

The story doesn’t end there, of course (in fact, it doesn’t even begin there, as scripture makes clear…), but these surprising, tender themes lie at the heart of who Christians believe God is.

I will be reading the poem at Broadway Baptist Church’s carol service, Nollick in the Glen, in Glen Falcon on Broadway in Douglas on Sunday, December 18.

The service starts at 5.30pm and all are welcome.

God With Us

Hark you to the star-heaved heavens: bright they ring!

Yon joyous hosts of light, they dance, they sing

a beauty through the skies, the promise of an answered hope.

At last, the victim voices cry, at last a reckoning strong,

a last fidelity to the ancient vow to set things right.

For long, too long, our seared, sore eyes have wept,

anguished as we wondered what kept the saving balm from sight.

Have mercy! Oh, how we long for freedom! Strong one, saviour, come!

In rescue for our reeling, for our healing, in rugged restitution bring your might!

To think that all our tears, all our fears, could be brought to this.

That power could be ruined, and with it all our dreams.

All that fine, fierce glory stripped away

to dregs and dirt and stench of hay.

Gone.

On the bleak hill there’s a babbling, a blinding bright opacity

for scoundrels and the outcasts, the weak ones and the maimed,

a shaken solidarity, a true and torn tenacity,

a scarred and raw veracity, speaking to the chained.

Here, there is just tender vulnerability.

The parents’ scared and trusting hands.

A baby’s cry.

A child. Held close.

The child.

Oh my God, my God.