Nativitas Ioannis

We cannot have announcements without birth. In Israel, on the eighth day, the male child is circumcised. (We gentiles do not follow the practice.) I have told you only a little about this thing.

The child is named. How difficult it is to name a child when you do not yet know what character that child will take on. So they asked: What then will this child be? Would it not be more sensible to name the child when it has died - and you know what that life contained. So it is in this Hebrew culture that the death is enacted in a sign. Thus the whole life of the child is summed up in a name.

Here the name is John. If you have something important to give, Beloved, put it in the middle of your writing. So John is marked and named and his life means Iah-gracious. His name is not Zachariah. We are to remember this death, but Iah-remembers is not the name of this child. Some things the Most High remembers, some not. Never is there a lack of grace.

Et tu puer, propheta Altissimi vocaberis. The child is the centre of attention at his naming. And so you, the child, the prophet of the Most High, will be called. Even my heart feels a secure pulse.

I will have to wait to hear the songs that were sung when the tongue of the dumb was loosened. My ears are not open. So let the singers not understand. Prima taught me music through rhythm and shape of words. Pitch she formed on my body by touch. From the stories of Gaius, I learned of his troubled son who played the kithar - as he said 'so much better than the visiting Nero'. (These stories, Prima and I recorded in our first book.) But the completeness of music is hidden from me. Still I feel words even if my jealousy of the singers is severe. I repent. Let them also read as well as sing so they may see what is in the middle of Zechariah's song.