Imagine with me that God herself is your mother, your visible, touchable mother.
She has carried you in her womb for nine months – you, this awareness now taking human form. Every cell of your body, every limb, every organ, has been formed from the stuff of her body. She has formed you not by will but by willingness. Her body has been emptied to give you life. Her being has been poured into yours.
And at last she has brought you forth. With pain and exertion, she has now given you a life that is in some sense separate, no longer hers. You are your own person.
Do you receive this gift of being you?
Imagine again with me that you are Mary. The messenger of God appears to you declaring that you have been chosen to bear a life, to bear an embodiment of God. And now all of heaven and earth awaits your answer. Will you with grace and courage accept this fulfillment of your being which demands everything you are?
Two images. One question. Will you be you?
Turning to God promises the fulfillment of all we are. We taste God in the silence of meditation and we know bliss. We are drawn into this love affair with the great Lover.
But then comes the question. Will you take this bliss, this love, and bear it in the confines of your body? Will you bear it, not as Mary or Jesus, but as you? Not as Ramakrisna or Anandamayi Ma, but as you?
“But I’m gay and sometimes depressed. And I’m a bit weird and can’t always find my place in the world. Can’t I just sit here in the silence and enjoy your company? You are perfect and infinite and without the troubles that come with limitations, and that is what I wish for.”
“Yes, sit with me,” she seems to say. “But you must come as you. Know that when you sit with me, you will take in love. You will be pregnant with love. You will give birth to love. It will take everything you have, and especially all your peculiarities, all your limitations, everything that you call weakness. You are the form I choose to take now.”
Heaven and earth await your answer.
Photo by Isabell Winter on Unsplash