"Morning has broken," so the ancient Gaelic hymn goes, and, it continues, all that is created emerges, shining, rejoicing and, as the stanza draws to a close, it notes that it is all springing "fresh from the Word."
     Old words, yes, but unalterably seminal and true.  The "Word" to which the song refers is the Word of God which, the first chapter of Genesis tells us, spoke the cosmos into existence, a deed enshrined in words with which many of us are aware, "And God said, 'Let there be light,' and there was light."  Speech lies at the foundations of the universe.  Speech created the world, speech shaped and molded the world; speech made us who we are.
     And it did so, as the medieval Christian mystic Thomas a Kempis notes in his Meditations, with Prayers, on the Life and Loving-Kindness of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, "without any labour."  Speech is the ultimate and unaided power of genesis and being.     If speech connotes meaning, that is, because speech indicates the fact of a conscious and meaningful presence of being, we can say that if speech created the world, meaning is woven into every corner of the cosmos.  Whatever else we may conclude about ourselves or our existence, we may therefore take heart that, over and above all else, we, as beings of this cosmos, are meaningful.     And so is the universe.