When the divine community we call God created the visible (and invisible) universe they spoke words like "let there be light" and things that were not in one moment began to exist in the next. Stars. Planets. Oceans. Mountains. Trees. Animals. Flowers.

All these things and more were breathed into existence by God. When the Father began to make all things, our wisdom tells us that it was the Son by whom the Father spoke all things into being; Christ spoke the things that were not as though they were and they were so. Orchid. Zebra. Maple. Everest. Atlantic. Jupiter. Andromeda. And so on.

Instead of speaking humanity into existence, our wisdom tells us that God hand-crafted men and women from the clay, breathed into our motionless humanity the breath of life, and gave us something the rest of creation does not have except metaphorically: the divine capacity of language.

Though all living things communicate, only humans have the gift of speech and this capacity is creative (like God) or destructive (like the dark powers), depending on our choice.

The mystery of the Incarnation is so great that every year—in this time of Advent and Christmas, six blessed weeks of waiting and celebration—I eventually see something I have never seen before, encounter a facet of the birth narrative I missed or neglected or did not see in all its beauty.

The season from Thanksgiving to Epiphany allows Christians to marinate in the story of the Word made bone of our bone and flesh of our flesh and we come away not as spectators but as *participants* in the mystery.