In one of our many small group conversations, a friend mentioned that God as a Father is a metaphor for God rather than a literal idea. Cancer played a dastardly trick on us, and I was never able to explore that idea with him any further, however that comment has been a lasting gift. It has nudged open even further this entity that I call God and jarred loose some rusted-shut hinges. The subconscious notion of a male God has steadily been dismantled over the years, but God as a Father remained as a sturdy, if not literal, image. To think of that image as a metaphor rather than literal was at first disorienting but then liberating and broadening.
With Mother’s Day around the corner, might this be a time to sit with other metaphors of God? A hen gathering her chicks perhaps? Or a woman’s continued search for her lost coin? How about a nursing mother? Or one who lifts an infant to their cheek and bends down to feed their little one?
Last year, my brother told me about this poem that he had heard, and I came across it again this year in my search for a Mother’s Day quote. If you’re given to contemplation and meditation, to ruminating and reflecting, I leave this poem (shared below) as an invitation to sit with and mull over, God as our Mother.
God Our Mother
~ By Allison Woodard
To be a Mother is to suffer;
To travail in the dark,
stretched and torn,
exposed in half-naked humiliation,
subjected to indignities
for the sake of new life.
To be a Mother is to say,
“This is my body, broken for you,”
And, in the next instant, in response to the created’s primal hunger,
“This is my body, take and eat.”
To be a Mother is to self-empty,
To neither slumber nor sleep,
so attuned You are to cries in the night—
Offering the comfort of Yourself,
and assurances of “I’m here.”
To be a Mother is to weep
over the fighting and exclusions and wounds
your children inflict on one another;
To long for reconciliation and brotherly love
and—when all is said and done—
To gather all parties, the offender and the offended,
into the folds of your embrace
and to whisper in their ears
that they are Beloved.
To be a mother is to be vulnerable—
To be misunderstood,
Railed against,
Blamed
For the heartaches of the bewildered children
who don’t know where else to cast
the angst they feel
over their own existence
in this perplexing universe
To be a mother is to hoist onto your hips those on whom your image is imprinted,
bearing the burden of their weight,
rejoicing in their returned affection,
delighting in their wonder,
bleeding in the presence of their pain.
To be a mother is to be accused of sentimentality one moment,
And injustice the next.
To be the Receiver of endless demands,
Absorber of perpetual complaints,
Reckoner of bottomless needs.
To be a mother is to be an artist;
A keeper of memories past,
Weaver of stories untold,
Visionary of lives looming ahead.
To be a mother is to be the first voice listened to,
And the first disregarded;
To be a Mender of broken creations,
And Comforter of the distraught children
whose hands wrought them.
To be a mother is to be a Touchstone
and the Source,
Bestower of names,
Influencer of identities;
Life giver,
Life shaper,
Empath,
Healer,
and
Original Love.
To answer P. D. Eastman’s question posed in that classic children’s book – “Yes, indeed, You are my Mother.”
(photo of our kids in the wheelbarrow was taken by Melissa Weber Photography)
