May 6, 2021

Womb

A reflection on God, our Mother

Psalm 139, Isaiah 37, and John 3

Throughout this time, I’ve found it easier and easier to think about God as my mother. Early on, when I could hardly hear God speak, Charlie prayed for me and received the prophetic image of me as a tiny point of righteous anger curled in on itself, as a baby kicking and screaming too hard and not staying still enough to feel loved, and of God around me: holding and enclosing me, and encouraging me to unravel so that I could feel her holding me, so that I could feel anything other than the white hot rage that I had curled in on.

In the midst of a time where physical touch is unusually restricted, this has been strange to think about and experience. I cannot remember the last time I, for example, shook someone’s hand. It was certainly before I transitioned. Our church gatherings are no longer punctuated by the touch of the peace, no longer concluded with hands on shoulders and hugs over tea and coffee. In this time where I can no longer touch my siblings, where sickness and death and transphobia combine to isolate me and turn me in on my rage, perhaps my heavenly Mother calls me to unravel further within her, to come into contact with the walls of her womb. That is the growth of a foetus, an unravelling. As my white hot ball of yarn unravels, we are knit together in our Mother’s womb. My rage is dismantled, my very essence passes between gentle, crafting fingers as a strand, and is remade into a shape unrecognisable from the skein. Eventually a foetus is unfolded enough that it is in complete contact with its mother’s womb. Already I can feel the walls again, I’m beginning to comprehend the voice that I feel with a hand planted to her diaphragm, I can manoeuvre myself, no longer compressing and trying to burn a way out. Now I am in full contact with the walls, I spin, I invert myself, my head is at the place of breach. Now I pray, Mother, now I trust, that there is in you the strength to bring me forth once more.

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