The Thin Cry of the Word

There was always the Crowd.
Even when Jesus lay folded in the darkness of Mary’s womb,
she carried Him into the crowded city of Bethlehem to be born.
There was a loud voice in the streets surrounding the stable.
The clinking of glasses, the shouts, the greetings of friends,
the tramping of feet and clatter of hoofs, laughter and snatches of song.

Only His Mother possessed silence.
And in her silence under the noise of the crowd,
she heard the sound of a stream flowing underground,
and breaking through the darkness to water the earth.
And she heard the little snap of a bursting seed,
and the sound of a bud breaking.

She heard the sound of the waters of birth.
Then the sound of water and opening of buds
and seed pushing into the light
became the thin cry of the newly born,
and the thin cry of the Word.


Excerpt taken from Caryll Houselander (1901-1954), The Birth