The risk(s) of birth

Until my eye, by divine coincidence, fell upon this poem today, I had forgotten that Madeline L’Engle also wrote poetry (I always associate her with the marvelous Wrinkle in Time trilogy). Yesterday and today, between long-distance updates on a very extended labor, I spent quite a bit of time contemplating the risks of birth for mother and child. (I’M AN AUNT!!! I’M AN AUNT!!! I’M AN AUNT!!! HOORAY!!! Er. Sorry ’bout the shouting. Just a wee bit excited--and relieved!--here. I would also like to add, for the record, that my SIL is Awesome :D)

So. Leafing through an Advent program this morning, I happened across L’Engle’s “The Risk of Birth”:

This is no time for a child to be born,
With the earth betrayed by war and hate
And a nova lighting the sky to warn
That time runs out and the sun burns late.
That was no time for a child to be born,
In a land in the crushing grip of Rome;
Honour and truth were trampled by scorn—
Yet here did the Saviour make his home.
When is the time for love to be born?
The inn is full on the planet earth,
And by greed and pride the sky is torn
Love still takes the risk of birth.

Kinda makes the people who so virtuously decline to bring children into this world on the basis of its awfulness seem kinda…stingy, does it not?

Love still takes the risk of birth.

Time to sign off; all this long-distance laboring is quite exhausting, I find.