Sometimes when I am confronted with terrible pain, I wish I were Buddhist so I could distance myself from the dust, flesh, and torment of the human condition. But no, the face of God is spun with joy, drawn by pain, creased with greeting. God avoids realms of esoteric understanding, wandering instead into the mud of identification, the spit and dirt of costly involvement. In flesh we endure heat, cold, toothache; in flesh we fear the rapist, the cancer. God could not be God-with-us if he wasn’t flesh.