"God's Love, Mother's Milk"

While in Seattle, I ran across the January issue of The Christian Century and saw this image on the front: the virgin Mary nursing a baby Jesus. Her naked breast lay on the front cover for the world to see, and baby Jesus, with all the presumptuousness of a baby, pulled her breast into his mouth.

I know this scene. I know it like I know my own heartbeat. The feeling of a baby curled up in your arms, their warm mouth gently pulling. I was immediately intrigued. I kicked up my heels and started reading. The article said that while the origins of the "lactating Virgin" image were uncertain, it gained new significance in Tuscany during the mid-14th Century. In communities consumed by plague, wars, and mal-nutrition, the image of Mary nursing Jesus became a symbol of "God's loving provision of life, the nourishment and care that sustain life, and the salvation that promises eternal life."

Gradually, this symbol lost it's meaning. The article goes into interesting details about how this happened, but I will tell you that by the late 1700's the image of the cross had arrived on the scene as the new depiction of God's love. It was, however, an extreme love born out of suffering and intense sacrifice, not the nurturing, life-giving love depicted by a nursing mother.

I have to tell you that this article cast a ray of light into my spirit. It opened a shaft of understanding. I've never understood the symbol of the cross as a depiction of love. I mean, not understood it in a bodily way. Not in a heart, mind, soul and guts kind of a way. When I see the cross I think of sacrifice ,and for good or worse, that's where the thought ends.

But when I looked at the painting of Mary nursing, I identified in a visceral way to her act of love. I feel those tiny palms ambling over the crests and valleys of my chest. I see two precious eyes, as wide as pools, searching my face. I remember the pain it took to learn to breast feed, the sores, the raw flesh, the exhaustion. I know the night and day physical demand. The way Jesus was never more than two hours away from his mother for the first four months of his life. I can imagine the way she must have staggered out of sleep, fumbling her child up to her breast. I can feel the way her breasts filled tight with milk when Jesus was not close to nurse. In short, I understand (as does every mother) the ceaseless demand of love, and then that strange abundance of grace that flows from some hidden crevice, even when you think you have reached the very last strand of sanity.

And to think that God experiences the same throes of love for me. Wow, I'd never thought of it that way.

Still, the mystery is left unsolved. I am baffled by a God whose care for me and every other human being exceeds the outer limits, even the boundless love of a mother.

Mother's Day in Seattle

Go here to see more pictures.

Auditory Hallucinations and the Responsibility of Being a Mom

In most cases, Auditory Hallucinations strike at the onset of deafness. Those who suffer from them say it's as if someone has turned on a radio inside their head. Music, which they have no control over, plays and plays sometimes to the point of madness. Scientists took pictures of patients' brains at the moment they said they were having an auditory hallucination. Then they took pictures of regular peoples' brains while listening to the radio. Both sets of pictures looked exactly the same.

I learned about this fascinating disorder last week while listening to Radio Lab. Leo Rangell was the first interviewee in a series of people talking about their hallucinations. One day, he woke up in the hospital to the sound of a Rabbi singing outside his window. Twelve years later, the music is still playing inside his head.

As Leo tells it, he didn't realize the music was inside his head. He really thought it was coming from outside his hospital window. With each new day as he got progressively better, the music changed. It got perkier, happier. Until he was riding in the car on the way home and realized that even though he was not beside his hospital window, the music was still playing. And this time, as he drove home fully recovered, he listened to these lyrics: "When Johnny comes marching home again, Hoorah, Hoorah."

At first the music nearly drove Leo crazy, but now in his late nineties he said it's become his friend. In fact, the music talks to him. If he really pays attention, he says there's always a reason for the song he's hallucinating. For example, a few years after his wife passed away, he woke one morning to the song "Bring Back My Bonnie to Me." Later that same morning, he realized it was his wedding anniversary.

This weekend I caught a severe head cold and have been sick as a dog. All weekend, I was snuffly, feverish, achey, and irritable. Poor Dwayne got the brunt of it. I wanted just to sleep. But couldn't seem to get more than a few hours in a row, because Noelle was battling an ear infection of her own and was extra needy.

The majority of my frustration stemmed from my pre-baby self, the me who believed that I had a right to a sick day, a day off - free of any responsibility. 'Round about Sunday afternoon, while I held Noelle's rosy little face in my arms, I realized for the hundredth time since having her that I'm a mother, and we don't get sick days. At least not for a few more years.

This may sound depressing to you, but it was actually freeing to me. Once I stopped trying to pass her off to Dwayne or grandma or grandpa and just accepted my responsibility, things went much better with the two of us.

Anyway, I woke up this morning to the sound of her squeaking in the other room. Dwayne had gone to work, so it was just me and her plus our colds. A song started playing in my head. Just the melody. I couldn't quite place it.

I thought of Leo Rangell and his songs and how they always mean something. Suddenly the lyrics clicked into place. It was the Beatles. As I sat spooning mushed up bananas into her mouth, these words ran through my mind;

"Eight days a week. I love you."

A Thought About the FLDS

I've been following the stories about the FLDS and I have found myself sympathizing with the women and children separated by this raid. This morning, as I sat in the Dentist chair, I listened to the latest talk show commentary on the story. The judges and attorneys kept talking about how we have "rescued" the children - all 416 of them.

But I gotta tell ya, I'm not sure I believe that their "rescued" state is any better than the alternative. At least on the compound they were with their families and mothers. Now they are in foster care, wards of the state, and vulnerable to who knows what, not the least of which may be neglect.

Dwayne worked with foster kids for a couple years. My friend Yvette has built her life and career around foster kids. Neither one of them have very encouraging stories about the foster care system. In my mind, those FLDS children are better off on the compound, surrounded by the support and network of their families, and parents - regardless of how many mothers they have.

Let me clarify - I don't agree with polygamy or child brides. Certainly not! But now there are reports that the 911 call by "Sarah" were a hoax and that leaves me asking the question, "So what abuses are these kids being subject to?" I hear tha fourteen year-old girls are getting married off. That's wrong, but during a recent segment of Talk of the Nation, Neal Conan interviewed an attorney and author expert in the field of polygamy who said that in actuality the FLDS rarely marry girls off younger than sixteen. And there was a time and place in this country when sixteen was considered the threshold of adulthood.

So tell me again, what have the FLDS done that merits tearing children away from their mothers? I'll grant you that perhaps I'm a little sensitive about this issue because I am a new mom. What if Christianity was in opposition to the law? I can't imagine having someone come into my home and take my little girl away from me because they thought monogamy was wrong.

Isn't there a better way to remedy the issue of polygamy than tearing families apart?

A Poem I'd Like To Share with You this April

Before A Departure in Spring
by W.S. Merwin

Once more it is April with the first light sifting
through the young leaves heavy with dew making the colors
remember who they are the new pink of the cinnamon tree
the gilded lichens of the bamboo the shadowed bronze
of the kamani and the blue day opening
as the sunlight descends through it all like the return
of a spirit touching without touch and unable
to believe it is here and here again and awake
reaching out in silence into the cool breath
of the garden just risen from darkness and days of rain
it is only a moment the birds fly through it calling
to each other and are gone with their few notes and the flash
of their flight that had vanished before we ever knew it
we watch without touching any of it and we
can tell ourselves only that this is April this is the morning
this never happened before and we both remember it

Oh Well Noelle

I've started a blog just for Noelle. All the baby stuff will go there, and I'll continue to write my reflections about life, including motherhood, here.

What's Really Important

I have been battling feelings of failure lately. I mentioned this to my mom one evening. "Well you need to get over that right now," she retorted. She was holding Noelle and standing in my kitchen. "Even if you never do another thing in your life, you've made this little girl and that's enough."
My mother has a wonderful way of reminding me what's important.