Writer's Wednesday's -- Caryl Houselander

The history of the Incarnation is like a fugue, in which the love of God for the world is the ever-recurring motif.

... It always returns to its lyrical simplicity: is always gathered back to its first phrase.

For the fugue is the music of the Word of God, God's spoken Word, telling His love; and the motif is always gathered back to be concentrated again in its first simplicity.

We always come back to the beginning.

In the beginning the love song of God is a folk song. Folk song is the telling of the whole world's story through the singing of one man's heart.

The Word of God uttered in Christ's human life is a folk song. In it is all the primal love and joy and sorrow of all the world.

It explains and simplifies all human lives in all times.

We hear it as children playing by the seashore hear the music of the ocean in a little shell.

We hear it in the voices we know best: our own children's voices, the voices of our parents, wives, husbands, and friends.

We hear it in laughter and tears, tuned to the dullness of our hearing, tuned to the beating of our hearts.

We hear it as sweet and clear as bird's song in Nazareth.

The song of the Incarnation is a folk song.

It is the song of the mother rocking the cradle.

It is the song of the children singing their nursery rhymes.

It is the song of the shepherd calling his sheep.

It is the song of the lover standing at the door.

It is the song of the bridegroom sing to the bride.

-----Caryl Houselander, The Reed of God.