Today I saw an image of Mary, with a maternity line streaking down her belly and arms holding her aching back as she anticipated labor. (Credit image: Honest Advent by Scott Erickson, to see it, follow his instagram page: honest advent. Here is the image link from his IG: https://www.instagram.com/p/CGhscreBaEu/
Here are my thoughts:
I live on the spine of the world. And when she stretches, I know her groans; the sound she makes as she struggles to ease the growing pressure that causes her pain.
I know this pain in aging, overused joints. I know the moans and groans as I desperately reach for relief; moving into poses of pigeons, and dogs, and sleeping babies.
I have lived on the fast of the earth, where her tears and ragged breath saturate and drown, swirling madly as she weeps out her anger and pain.
I know this overfull storm of emotions and wetness that must be released. The ones that start in one place and grow and spread as it moves to a new space to be released. I know the tear swollen eyes and throat as I weep and rage out in order to be balanced again.
I have lived in the barren dry spaces of mother earth’s body. The ones where she holds her bitter, dry, deathly hot and cold grief; where a drop brings a blossom. and a day later it is dust. Where the arid landscape has a bold, raw, unapologetic beauty, cracked and split by the sun. Like my aging skin, moist as long as I oil it, and withered parchment an hour later. I know this dry grief in my skin and most delicate spaces.
This creation- she is she.
She is me.
We are we.
Created and bound together for each other.
And my God entered this sacred, aching, slick, and dry being with me….
and then I knew my divine self… created in Their image,
is the fullness of love.
Dirty Soled Pastor 