Here; hold this.

No, I don't care if you've never, in your life, held an infant. Hold this. The little wobbly head, round as a softball and slightly squished by birth, lies in the crook of your elbow as though it had been designed to be there. Support the head. Very important. The neck's not strong enough yet to hold the heavy head up, and if you don't keep the head supported, you might damage the brain. Don't worry, though; this head-supporting business rapidly becomes automatic, totally customary.

The tiny body lies along your forearm, intensely alive but quiet, breathing softly. It's funny; babies are a perfect weight and temperature, most satisfying. Your hand cups the baby's bottom and legs, bowed by the womb's walls. It feels so natural and so strange. Don't worry; relax. It all comes quite naturally. I promise you, you won't drop the baby; just let yourself soften and your body will know what to do.

Now, look at the child you're holding. It is looking up at you, its eyes not quite focussed, dark and frowning a little, the features slightly inhuman, unearthly, still browless and lashless--you may think "ET" or "monkey", and you won't be far wrong. You can cover the whole of its torso with the palm of your hand. Its feet are the length of one joint of your finger. It looks at you with obelisk eyes, absolutely foreign and yet far nearer than your own skin, nearer than you could ever have imagined a being to be--trusting and tired and demanding everything you thought you had, and then some.

It is tiny and merciless. It wants the breast to nurse, it wants cuddling, it wants to be closely wrapped, it wants to kick and wiggle, it wants warmth, to be close, to be free--it wants so much more than you could possible imagine. You thought it would be so easy to meet its needs. Hell, it's only a baby.... But then you discover that instinct has its limits; nursing is something learned, whatever the hardwiring, and something so right and natural can also be exhausting hard work. Like love, or faith.. .

Hardwiring? You feel your own wiring change as the weak little creature lays its hold on you, strong-arming its ways with infinite but quite ruthless gentleness into your life. Everything you thought REALLY mattered becomes rapidly irrelevant. Things that you never thought about in your life suddenly become overwhelmingly important. You prop this little thing up on your knees as you lie in bed, playing with hands the size of walnuts, and you feel your whole self go loose and strange, as though something had sliced through all your inner ligaments and restitched them differently. It's a strange feeling, but oddly full of joy.

Its wants, too, will only grow, coaxing out reserves in you that you don't want to dream about now. Very simply, it wants all your love, your whole being, all the best of you--bests that you must accomplish at a speed you didn't think you could manage. You didn't know what it would ask of you, or how quickly you would have to grow into this new role. No one could have told you, and you will understand in future that you can't explain this to anyone; it has to be experienced, this changing. Sort of like getting religion, in fact.

This child requires, absolutely and with the unthinking trust of the autocrat, every scrap of the love you knew you had, and then all the love you didn't know you could manage--unthought-of reservoirs of love that you will discover, because this tiny, gentle, tender tyrant knows instinctively exactly how far to push you. And then a bit..

And it was in a package like this that God presented Godself to humanity, for your sake and mine, for the sake of strangers on the bus and in the shop, for the sake of people you love, for the sake of people you hate and fear, for the sake of those you mourn, for the sake of militiamen in Bosnia and shop clerks in Stockholm and all humanity, every one of us, even Martha Stewart. God chose this small, ungainly, lovely shape because God meant to do this humanity business from the ground up, sharing all that we have and are--begining with our weakness, our vulnerability, our helplessness.

God and babies will push you though bramblebushes of love and need and selflessness that nothing else, no one, could ever conceivably require of you. And you will follow Love and love, never entirely understanding, never entirely sure of what you're doing, but trusting that it will all come round right in the end.