The Christmas Treasure Beach

Hidden in the Sand

I met Marti for prayer at a small park in our city. I was going home to Jamaica to visit after many years and had more than a few distracting fears. Identifying with our native exilic poet, Claude McKay, I lamented, “Too much have I forgotten . . .” [1] As our prayer time concluded, Marti paused; still holding my hands and with her eyes still closed, she spoke. “I see you walking along a beach; you’re bending down and picking up things—shells, sea glass, coral, driftwood . . . treasures! You’re going home to retrieve your treasures,” she emphasized, opening her eyes and looking kindly into mine. I tucked those words away in my heart, grateful for anything that would prepare me. However, that visit and subsequent ones found me heart-choked with the cares of life and vaguely recalling Marti’s words . . . until it came time to write about Christmas.

“I should be able to find something,” I imagined, though bristling at a fellow writer’s reminder that Advent, the four weeks leading up to Christmas day, was similar in purpose to Lent—a time of sobriety and personal reflection necessary for the meaningful apprehension of Emmanuel.

Convinced that the rooms of my soul—long-padlocked against grief, loss, and regret—had nothing to contribute, I searched elsewhere in my heart but came up empty.

Dismayed, I yielded to the Captain of my soul for Him to chart the way to Christmas this year, to heaven-come-down. His map would venture through forgotten burial places, cobwebs of the mind, and the empty, shattered wine bottles of Satan’s piracy. But the way to the treasure—the treasure that Marti had foreseen—was with Him. As He ushered me onto the beach of my Christmases past, a wave of salty tears withdrew, leaving three items exposed in the sand, glinting red, green, and “gold, like clear glass.”

A Jewel of Lowly Estate

I immediately recognized one item: green, but not Christmas green—pea green. It was, in fact, a single gungo pea. Prompted to not dismiss this ordinary token, I looked again, suddenly reacquainted as with an old friend. Like one reserves the “good” dishes or tablecloth for Christmastime, so with the gungo pea in Jamaica. Harvested green, it is preferred over the red kidney bean that is typically used to make the indispensable Jamaican side-dish, rice and peas. Visions filled my mind of my late grandmother’s own bushes growing along the fence, and of my childhood self, settled before the fragrant pile to shell the freshly harvested pods. Shelling was tedious, but rewarding. I thought of Jesus’s words “that except a grain fall to the ground and dies, it abides alone,” as I watched the bowl fill with the gleaming new peas. A fresh wave of gratitude washed over me as I remembered these my humble, dearly departed and the life they imparted to me.

I smiled at the memory, acknowledging how fitting it was that, in the season dedicated to commemorate Emmanuel, the fresh, unpretentious gungo pea typically graces the celebratory meal of rich and poor alike! I stooped to pick up the small shining orb from memory’s sands, grateful for how perfectly it reflected the dear faces of my deceased forebears—the shell of their earthly frames appropriately laid aside, but the verdant seed of their heart devotion still lively in the traditions, humbly preserving memory of the specialness of the King’s table. Thus retrieved, the King’s pea took its place in the treasure chest of my Christmas store.

A Folksy Spider and the By-Way Jewel 

As the cobwebs of memory cleared, I recognized the next item, deep red in the sand, as well as the story that went with it.

The mischievous folklore character Anancy, an anthropomorphized spider, was in a bind. It was Christmas and he was penniless. Anancy’s characteristic laziness had found him furtively seeking leftovers in other people’s fields. But this year’s gleanings were scant to nonexistent. In desperation, he gathered an attractive fence-side weed, hoping to pass it off as something worthy of purchase at the old-time Christmas Eve Grand Market.

However, Anancy’s plan to sell the plant backfired, and he was soon running pell-mell, oral-folktale-style, through the festive market as his cheating efforts were exposed. Fortuitously, before he could be apprehended, Anancy managed to dump the weeds into the large pot of boiling water that a market woman was about to use to prepare hominy corn porridge for sale. Mid-protest, the porridge vendor was stunned by the rich red liquid that was quickly filling her pot!

Questions of, “What is it?” rippled through the gathering crowd, with the sneaky spider protesting that it was “something nice, something good, something . . . real!” The main pursuer, with Anancy now firmly in his grip, grabbed a ladle and tasted the wine-red liquid, but scowled at the tangy flavor. “That’s because it’s not finished!” the wily arachnid argued.

His skills of trickery found him freed and conducting much stirring and wheedling of spices such as cinnamon, pimento, and nutmeg from the porridge vendor’s stall, as well as her sugar. Ladle-full after ladle-full, offered to any willing taster, Anancy began to sell cups of the wondrous liqueur. Seizing on the comment of a pleased patron that, “It tastes so real!” the trickster coined the name, “Sor-rel.” So it was that the cunning spider gained attribution for another Jamaican tradition and ennobled the juice of the ruby-red sorrel “weed” from the wayside. [2]

Raising a toast in allegiance to the King, I smilingly made room for this royal flotsam, sorrel, in my heart-trove.

Polished, Unto Completion 

No snow on our Carib Island,
Though gentle Trade Winds blow
O’er valley fair, over highland,
A carol sweet and low;
For here on our Carib Island
The Christmas sunbeam shines for the Baby of Christmas!
Shine, Sunbeam! Shine! [3]

A cool Christmas breeze wafted through my mind, revealing what seemed like a piece of ice on the sand—sea glass! As sunshine worked to penetrate the opaque shard, an unsettling memory presented itself.

A clear glass of water containing a raw egg, elevated to the morning sun during Christmastide, was in the hand of an extended family member who was eager for marriage. I relaxed, recalling the frivolity of those amusingly gathered around to poke fun at the outcome. “What will the approaching new year bring?” was the answer being “divined” by the egg-left-overnight in the glass of water: for that, indeed, is what it was—divination—albeit in jest. The arrangement of the egg’s albumen was said to bear messages; if the cloudy strands billowed and extended to the top of the liquid, connoting a ship’s mast, the questioner could expect overseas travel in their near future. Of course, this was no great feat of forth-telling, since Jamaicans are well-known for traveling far and wide. Indeed, all of us who had been on the back step that morning wound up living far from home . . . exile.

Leaving home—the commingled joy and sorrow blew a dark cloud over my hitherto sun-bathed strand.

Had the Spirit of Christmas brought me full circle, only to accept the castaway’s lie that “you can never go home again”?

Knowing His promise to never leave His own alone, I sat with the not-so-clear sea glass, waiting for the Son’s advent.

It was not long before He cast me a strong line of truth—an anchoring quote from the great Reformer, Martin Luther: “We are not yet what we shall be, but we are growing toward it, the process is not yet finished, but it is going on, this is not the end, but it is the road. All does not yet gleam in glory, but all is being polished.” [4]

A Better Ship Story

My heart, steadied by this truth, caught reflections in the edged facets of my sea-glass shard—memories of the glorious annual carol services held in the iconic parish church in downtown Kingston. Transformed by the evening lamps, everything—chandeliers, candelabras, altar accessories, crosses, lecterns—reflected light and gold “clear like pure glass”! The prismatic effect made the faces of the boys and girls of the school choirs shine, adding to the glory as they caroled the King’s advent:

I saw three ships come sailing in,
On Christmas Day, on Christmas Day!
I saw three ships come sailing in,
On Christmas Day in the morning … [5]

I rose in memory with them, in faith-filled welcome, confidently placing that not-yet-clear sea glass among my heart’s treasures, anticipating the multifaceted diamond it now represented of my soul hereafter. Luther’s words rang clearer than the church’s Christmas bells. No, we are not yet what we shall be—still in the tumbler of God’s grace, being polished by sands on shores of all our travels! But “When He shall appear, we shall be like Him. For we shall see Him as He is.” (1 John 3:2 KJV) These sands of time at Christmastide and, indeed, in every season of the soul, are working for us a far greater weight of glory, a treasure-hoard we can’t imagine, because our Savior Christ, the fullness of the Godhead bodily, and His mother, Mary, sailed that good ship, Christmas, not just to foreign lands, but all the way Home!

Notes
[1] “Flameheart,” by Claude McKay
[2] Lady Vivienne’s Authentic Slices of Jamaica, Anancy & Sorrel
[3] Jimmy Tucker, carol, “Jamaica Noel”
[4] George W. Forell and Helmut T. Lehman, edited, Martin Luther’s Defense and Explanation of All the Articles, from Vol. 32 of Luther’s Works
[5] A suspected origin of this English folk carol, dating to the 17th century, is believed to have been in commemoration of the 12^th-century arrival of the three ships, purportedly bearing the relics of the Magi to the Cologne Cathedral, in Germany. The cask believed to be holding the relics remains there in gilded display to this day!

The featured image, “Kate’s Arrangement,” is courtesy of Lancia E. Smith and is used with her glad permission for Cultivating.

Denise Stair-Armstrong

I am Denise Stair Armstrong; born and raised Jamaican. I received all my formal academic education in the land of my birth at Shortwood Teachers’ College and the University of the West Indies, specializing in English Language & Literatures in English. The remainder I’ve gained home educating our three wonderful children – Joseph, Charis and Timothy, parenting them with my husband Claude, and in caring for my wheel-chair bound mother. I enjoy reading, cooking, gardening, theatre and ballroom dancing with Claude (only!) and digging into the Word of God.

My passion is worship expressed primarily through writing inspirational pieces that urge readers not to miss how much the Lord has “cramm’d earth with heaven”. My heart is to encourage them to traverse the gap between all our hearts and the cultures that shape them, via the Bridge that is Calvary’s cross.

denisesarmstrong.com