Gaspar’s Sign

GASPAR sat atop the gangly beast, his body swaying to its rolling gait. Memories stirred.

The star-gazer sage relished such occasions when he could without interruption review his past, his station in life, and particularly good fortune.

Gaspar was mildly aware that certain virtues had seemed to elude him. Like humility. This, he would not deny. He found himself more often growing uneasy at his self-congratulatory reflections. But only to a measure.

“It was I after all”, he mused afresh, “who first took serious note of that curious beacon disclosing itself in the western sky. And didn’t I, Gaspar,in my scrupulous research, uncover the mystery-promises that seemed perhaps tied to the phenomenon?’

These promises, he reflected, were oral references of ancient Hebrew parchments – oracles predicting a king’s birth. A child-king promised to the Hebrew peoples. . . perhaps even to the world at large.

‘Of Course it was I.’

His shoulders lowered and he breathed out a sigh, still hesitant to credit others who were equally vital to the venture upon which they now embarked. . .

After their months of travel the star’s brightness radiated almost directly overhead now. Gaspar squirmed in his saddle, a curious discomfort had been welling inside him. A mood tracing itself to no specific source that he could call to mind. His saddled shifted again.

The star’s beam – brighter than he had yet observed it – converged it seemed, with another kind of light, a piercing presence exposing the very interior of his  soul.

Gaspar felt a stab of conscience unlike any before. His body gave way to a sudden muffled cry leaving him troubled by his own abrupt sorrowing. He spoke, faintly audible words of severe intensity spilling from his lips.

“Impure! Impure am I. . . arrogant and impure am I!”

Drawing a sharp breath Gaspar choked out an unrehearsed confession – distress punctuating each word, “I have regarded my brothers with contempt.”

His remorse carried forward – the probing light of conviction unrelenting.

“I am unworthy. . .”

“But”, added Gaspar (a bewildering question had formed amidst his confessions),

“Before whose holy face I am unworthy I know not!” What I do know is I dare not proceed to the place of the king-child, not in this state – sullied by this stain.”

Gaspar questioned, reflectively now, ‘Who is this one, this child to whom the light we feel has been guiding us? Might it be he – or the spirit of he – who moves upon me so, here even before I have beheld his face?’

He drew his camel back and brought his cape about his face. At his command the camel knelt and, on dismounting, Gaspar went to his knees. Repeating an earlier refrain he cried, “I must gain mercy. Mercy”.

“Oh Exalted Being”, he whispered, his eyes lifted to the night’s canopy, “Governor of constellations . . Mercy!”

In this moment he sensed a thing wholly new to his former experience. Sitting motionless and in awe, he felt a bathing presence, bathing – Wave on purifying wave. Tender. Cleansing. Joyous. Wave on wave washing over him.

He did not measure how long he lingered, lying there prostrate on the hardened path. Gaspard moved to rise.

His right foot, pressed beneath him so long, had lost feeling. Reaching a hand upward, he grasped a tree’s low-hanging branch. A picture, a metaphor of sorts, came to Gaspar’s mind as he rose and balanced there now on the steady foot. He clung to the branch, gazing at its form, afresh.

“Yes, yes, I am seeing it now. This is who I am, I am a man not able – not of my own might to stand. I am off-balance and much in need of support – such as this tree supplies to my bodily frame now.’ He drew earnest comfort in the musing.

Soon there stirred in him a resolve – and a whispered pledge. He felt his jaw anchor in place. Tears moistened his eyes,

“From this hour I shall walk rightly in the company of others,” the magi whispered. “My brothers – Melchior and Balthazar indeed – and too, my servants as well. Friends unto whom I shall render proper regard, and service. Yes, we shall be – each to the other – a supporting limb. As a branch. “He paused looking upward, “May I find strength.”

Excited voices suddenly cut in, spirited cries from somewhere ahead. Ecstatic, adoring, calls sounded out in varied tongues – Aramaic, Hebrew, Persian, Arabian. All of them announcing, heralding, calling forth a special personage.

The child-king.

A Hebrew’s voice bearing a trace of Persian accent rang out. Clear, crisp, jubilant. The call moved Gaspar. Other voices followed.

Cupping a weathered palm to his ear, he took in a string of wondrous, descriptive exclamations. One by one. . .

“All worship to him, the Christ-child!

“Messiah!”, called another.

Then, “King. . . “Morning star! . . .

“the BRANCH!”

The word seized Gaspar, ‘the Branch?’

Gaspar swallowed hard and a shiver coursed through his body. A breeze touched his face, stirring his beard. He glanced to the tree and its limb, now back of him and beyond reach.

Peering forward once again toward the path ahead he took in the lighted glow of a simple dwelling. A breeze touched his face, stirring his beard. A tender warmth enveloped him. He whispered, “Soon I shall offer up my myrrh to him – my Lord!”

Gaspar mounted his animal which on rising seemed herself taken by the night’s magic, “Bear us forward, camel – do you see the light of the dwelling there, camel? It is there we shall meet a child. .

The King-child. The Branch!”

©2020/2024 Jerry Lout

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