December 25, 2003
Words becoming
A little boy lived in a town not actually on a map, but in a Broadway play called *The Human Comedy.*
A scene shows him in his public library wandering alone away from his older sister, back into the stacks. Rows and rows of books towered over him in long, dark, ominous shelves. He looked up in wonder, considered them carefully, and said softly, in almost breathless awe, “Words, millions of words.”
Another little boy lived a long way from Broadway in a small, central Texas town. One day, a friend of his mother’s stopped by. She had got a new hat. As she tried it on, she asked his mother if she thought it was “becoming.” He was already strangely curious about words and instantly set to wondering what other than a hat a hat might become. It was years later that he heard Bing Crosby sing to Dorothy Lamour, “moonlight becomes you, it goes with your hair…”
Once upon an earlier time, another lover of words said of Jesus to the whole world another strange thing about words and about becoming. “The Word became flesh,” he said, “and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth… ”
Two little boys, one in childhood as long as plays last, the other forever searching to find childhood. Might they think it passing strange that at Christmas, when old John told of his friend Jesus, he spoke not of mangers or stars or wise men or donkeys, but of the Word that became?