Like a lot of us who grew up inside evangelical faith traditions, I ingested my fair share of masculine-dominant, militaristic images of God. A war-mongering warrior god.  A take-no-prisoners god.  A father god with better things to do.  If I’m being honest, God looked more like an all-powerful, politically-motivated celebrity than the meek, uncelebrated Christ concerned with peace-making and blessing the poor.  It has taken me years to unravel these harmful images and repair experientially a more gentle, compassionate, safe, and restful image of the Divine.  To trust the gaze that holds me is Love.  A love that is not mad anymore.

Throughout the church’s evolution, the feminine was in fact revered and understood to be God’s nature.  Prior to the 1750’s, the image of a mother with her nursing child was seen as the predominant sacred symbol of God’s love toward humanity.  The biblical text is thick with metaphor and imagery and poetry of God as mother, not forgetting the children at her breast, a mother hen hovering and hiding her young under her wings, a womb from whom the seas burst forth from.  El Shaddai, a common name for God in the Hebrew Scriptures, often translated as Almighty means “Breasted-One.”  I sometimes wonder where these sermons were when I was growing up.

I am utterly convinced that if more women were permitted in pulpits we would hear many more embodied sermons of the words, “this is my body, given for you; take and eat.”  Christ whose broken body fed masses, as mother.  I am certain that my experiences of becoming a pregnant and breastfeeding parent has nurtured this new sense of sacredness in me, while also acknowledging that this metaphor does not work for or resonate with everyone.  There are multiple meanings each of us bring to being mothered, and all deserve its own kind of honoring.

Something that echoed in me recently is the root of the Hebrew word racham meaning to be compassionate or merciful also means to womb. To be shown compassion is to be wombed.  On a recent trip out west I felt this sense of being wombed, enfolded in the sinking sun and gorgeous ponderosa pine, the fog rising off the water.  I was held and safe, left breathless for a moment, beholding the fading rose light at dusk.  Letting myself be fed by God as a nursing mother, to be nourished and cherished, and to rest in the softness of that love.  To be un-judged, minded with tender affection, held by the hovering wing.  

As we watched the sun set over the mist, I asked my spouse if he has had this experience of being wombed.  He pondered that wherever there is water, whether a skylit lake or waterfall, that he feels “put back in.”  It is the feeling of being reminded of your smallness, utter dependence, and a healthy sense of un-importance in the grandeur of things.  

This is the hope: that we feel “put back in” by a love we need not be afraid of, where our inmost longings are re-woven, and re-wombed.

A blessing for when you need compassion

Blessed are you at wit’s end, 

Finding yourself buried again

The expectations overwhelming, 

the tiredness overtaking bones with glaring familiarity

Surely being limited only adds weight to the limitless to-do lists

All the should haves and could have beens

Reminding you of all that doesn’t add up

But blessed are you, who are not up for debate or equation

May you notice the moments of beauty and connection

The cat drinking in sun-warmth

The raspberries on children’s bellies

The joy thrumming through like a drum

The beating heart of a womb

This pressure to keep up is here, 

but not all there is

To a life lived 

Put back in