The seed that grows within the womb
of the bewildered child-woman
began, we are told,
as a loving, aching thought
in the mind of God.
The mysteries of our mortal being
lie deep in the pre-historic
annals of creation,
defying the simple explanations
of both religion and reason.
Those who embrace faith
will insist on one thing alone:
that its source is also love.
This love, they declare
in obedience to the one who they follow,
is the beginning of all that is good
and beautiful and true.
We cannot say with confidence
that the acts leading to impregnation
all have their genesis at that same point;
but their outcomes, small, pink and
vulnerable,
always take us there.
Through circumstance
the child-woman from Nazareth
finds herself with her husband
in a Bethlehem
stable; or so one story goes.
In this humble shelter, lacking in amenity
but with its own strange appropriateness and
beauty,
the moment arrives; and the baby
is delivered among the straw,
with all the requisite pain, groans, tears
and blood.
In this place, made holy,
and at this instant rendered sacred,
love begins its wondrous journey of
fulfilment
among us all.
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