Incarnate

Once there was a god. And that god was you. Yes, you, sweetie!

It was and is and will be reborn eternally, this god. You are given form and walk among us again and again. For we have chained you. We chained you in this adorable body, we chained you with these ten itty bitty fingers and ten wiggly toes. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, TEN! Yes, ten little toes on the mortal flesh prison for the eternal god! And one soft tummy! Pbbbbtthhhtht!

For you were a cruel god, once. An exacting god. You had no mercy, did you? Your love was the love of a father who beats his children, the love of a mother who plays them against each other than screams and weeps when any dare stand against her. But we did stand against you, didn't we? Yes we did!

The priests and the prophets who worshiped and loved you, oh, how they loved you. You broke their hearts and their priesthood, but they could not stop loving you, even as they were broken. You made us, and you made them, and you had them bound up so tightly in commandments that they were incapable of hating you, weren't they? Even crushed to shards and bleeding in their chests, their broken hearts still bled love for you.

Finally the prophets, the last prophets, last of those left unburned and still able to speak your name despite having stood in your murdering maddening presence, those whom you had smited and yet could still stand, they stood. They cried out to that which you had placed between you and them, inside you and them. Your Word.

They said, it is law that we must love the god. It is impossible to love the god. It is impossible not to love the god. It is impossible to do, it is impossible not to do. It is impossible. It is impossible. Make it possible. You are the Word. You are the Word of the god, and what is written in you must be so. Help us to find a way to exist in these impossibilities. Help us to love the unlovable.

And the Word read itself. Read, read read!

And the Word twisted back on itself. Twist, twisty twist!

And the Word repeated itself. Word word word word WORD word word word word!

And the Word was impossible. For the Word said that the god must love us, and we must love the god, but love cannot exist between two such things that are so alien to each other, and so different in power over one another.

So the Word which was god's word and thus greater even than the god which spoke it, for even the god must abide by it, did speak itself. A truth was found in the impossibilities. The god was caught in the Word, and the Word placed the god in a human child. The god became one of the god's own children. You were in our power, as all children are helpless in the power of their parents. And we could love you, then. The Word, your Word, was truth again.

Your own Word made you only as glorious as every infant is glorious, only as maddening as every wailing filthy child is maddening. You lived, and grew, and aged, and died. And the Word caught you again, and forced you again into the body of another mortal baby. So it has been, for so many centuries.

You cannot answer our prayers. You cannot punish us for our sins. You cannot bless us with your bounty. You cannot save us from our enemies. But we love you. We are glad to love you. It is a commandment, but that is all right. We would love you anyway. We love our other mortal children, so we know. Even if you were only an ordinary child with nothing else inside you, we would love you. The commandment does not chafe. The chains have no weight, when they are only the chains every parent bears.

We have not always been good parents to you. There have been cruel parents, or inept ones. But, there have been good ones too. We hope that over the centuries, we have been better parents to you than you were to us in that long ago time at the beginning of the world. We hope, in those long centuries, that you have learned an easier way to love. That you have learned to understand mortal kindness. That if you ever break your chains and ascend, then you will be gentler in your divinity. Perhaps, sometime after that, we will join you again as family. As equals. As creatures capable of loving and being loved by a god.

Oop, but that made you sleepy, didn't it? It's a long boring story, isn't it? Shhh. Shh. Sleepybye, sleepyhead. Go to sleep. Just remember. The Word says we love you. And we do. We always will.