‘The Two Caves’ by Elizabeth Goudge
There was once a moment in time that defeated time. It was the moment when something pierced through the dark flood of the years as a crocus spear thrusts through the winter earth, to grow to a flower-like flame, die and live once more, never to die again.
The moment in history when it thrust up like this was when a man was born who would carry this perfection in his human body as a lantern carries the gold. Saint Augustus says of this moment that ”God looked at us though the lattice of our flesh and he spake us fair.”
It might have been though that when this love thrust though the whole world would have known it. But actually hardly anyone know, so quiet and humble a thing is love, our God.
The night of the coming was the night when poor people lit a lantern in their stable. They had not done the before, since the tired beasts did not need a light to go to sleep by, and they did not do it again, but that night they had to because a girl gave birth to her baby there. The inn was full and there was no other shelter.
The stable was only a cave in the rocky hillside but it held privacy and human kindness for the girl and her worried husband, and about midnight a son was born. He cried a little, but when he was put I his mother’s arms he was happy and did not cry again.
And after that there was a deep silence in the little town until very early in the morning, while it was yet dark, some poor men came running; and they ran fast in eagerness because of some news that had been told them. For a moment they halted in the light that shone through the broken wood of the stable door, too awed to go in, and the beam from a star overhead silvered the hair and the beard of the oldest of them.
And then they bent their heads and entered the cave. They were there for a short while and when they came out there was a brightness in the eastern sky and the youngest said, “This cave is the heart of the world.”
The child grew to be a man of great strength and vaster love and there was no experience known to men, joyous or appalling, peaceful or agonizing, through which he did not in some way pass, leaving the gold of his love at the heart of it to shine upon us as each in our turn we come to the happy or hard things of our life.
But the eyes of perfect love were too piercing to be met easily by evil men, and though he spake them fair in love and compassion he also spake them straight and hard in truth and anger, and so they killed him under the hot sun, and at evening buried his body in a cave in the hillside.
But very early in the morning, while it was yet dark, the feet of poor men came running; and they ran fast in eagerness because of some news that had been told them. When they came to the cave they halted for a moment in awe, because the stone that had closed it had been rolled away, and the light from the morning star silvered the head and the beard of the oldest of them. Then they bent their heads and went into the cave.
After a while they came out and the east was turning to gold. The young man said, “He is risen.” The older one said nothing, for with grief and joy he was past the power of audible speech, but in his heart he said, “An empty tomb is now at the heart of the world.”
And so there were these two caves that were really the same cave, because each was at the heart of the world, and these two great happenings, a birth and a re-birth that were the same birth. And because love lives forever in the heart, all shall be well.
