28/12/2025
Our theme for 2026 is ‘Let Justice Flow’. How can we as individuals, as an intentional community be justice-makers and hold hope in an increasingly violent world?
Today we remember the Holy Innocents, the slaughter of the boy children under Herod’s reign, with this powerful poem by
Dr Daisy Black.
The Girls Left
Afterwards, the women of Bethlehem said never again.
They turned their faces away from the palace
And emptied all their love into their surviving children.
A group of girls grew up without brothers.
Learned to pull the plough, to herd the sheep,
To barter at the market, to cut a fair deal with traders,
To play in the streets without shame.
They wove cloth with sand worked into bright threads.
Without brothers they learned to track the stars’ remote courses.
They learned to read.
A thousand young women grew
The gritty weight of Rachel’s cries at the core of their frames.
As they sowed, cut and milled their own grain,
Herod withered softly behind his gold doors.
When the exiles returned from Egypt
The town thrummed with new stars.
Icon writer unknown
