Welcome the wild one, the desert declaimer, urgently, awesomely, crying his news: "Now, listen now! There is One who comes after! I am unfitted to fasten his shoes." Camel-hair coated, unkempt and unbending, living off grasshoppers, honey and briars, knee-deep in water, he hails the impending flame-giving Spirit's enveloping fires. Hear from the herald the king who's expected, world-ending wrath is the power he describes: God's own anointed, outspoken, uncensored, judging the palace, the priests and the scribes. See now the young one who lingers and listens, standing intent in the buzz of the throng, waiting in line, on the brink of decisions, seeking the Spirit that beckons thru John. Gaspingly drenched by the people's baptizer, drowned in the grief of our groanings and cries, bowing beneath God's unfettered outsider, rising envisioned, he opens his eyes. Welcome God's Love-Child, anointed, invested, desert-impelled by the Spirit within. World-making love, shining, tempered and tested, now is at hand - let salvation begin!