Advent Calendar – 23 December
Nativity Stories: Anna
They’re always rude about us, the old wifies. We get in the way of progress, they say, with our old ways of doing things, our opposition to progress. We take up the precious time of the Temple leadership, asking for a word, a blessing, answering queries about our health with long lists of symptoms. Can’t we see, they say, that we need to focus on the next generation, or the generation after that? What future has the Temple unless younger people are involved? We need to step aside to let them bring in new ideas to capture the youth.
As if I’d ever stop the young from sharing in the blessings which have been given to me. When did I bar the doors, or send away another who’d come to pray and fast as I have done for years? Sometimes, it’s true, I might have mentioned they had taken the spot I’d made my own, or missed a psalm appointed for the day, or worn a scarf unsuitable for this place. But how else are they meant to learn?
It was my father who taught me the customs and traditions, the prayers and blessings all Jews should know. He was proud of being a son of Asher, named as happy, and from a land where olives grow strong and fruitful. When I married my husband, my father gave a vat of olive oil of the finest quality to his family; I brought my knowledge and my faithfulness. I go for weeks without remembering my husband; I’m not even quite sure what he looked like any more. It must be 60 years since he died, and heaven did not bless us with a child.
But, good daughter of Asher as I am, I have been happy. After all we do not find contentment by looking for it, but by living as we should. God promises blessings for those who love him and their neighbour. And I have loved him, day and night, in his Temple. I used to have a pitch on the road to the Temple, buying and selling mint and thyme, dill and cumin for tithes, making just enough to keep a corner of a room to sleep at night when I wasn’t offering my prayers here. But when they widened the road, they cleared us all away, and there was nothing else for it but asking the priests if they minded me taking a dusty corner for myself right here. They would have turned me down except they knew full well the duty of kindness to widows and orphans. And I was both of these.
I used to love the first-born brought to be presented, their parents old enough to be my grandchildren. I’d walk right up and say a blessing, and wish them all the happiness in the world from a daughter of Asher. They’d thank me, and no doubt sometimes thought me mad. But this day, there was something in the air. Old Simeon had shown up, looking on his last legs, but when he took this Galilean boy into his arms, he sang out that salvation had come in this very child. I saw it too, after all those years worshipping, fasting, praying, wating for the Lord, that he had come, not in clouds of glory, but the folds of a shawl. A child at last for me, and for all the old wifies and the youth.
Rembrandt, The prophetess Anna