Do I Need to be Born Again?
Afterall, I am the ultimate creator
I’m a creator. Not because I chose to be a creator, but because I was born to be such. I’ve learned more about surrender, faith, trust, and God by growing and giving birth with this body that grew within my own mother and grandmother1 than religion ever taught me.
There’s something both empowering and surreal about feeling a new life’s subtle twinge deep in your womb. The twinge that leads to painful kicks and undulations. Movements that you both dread and anticipate for many months. Reminders that another life needs your body to survive and thrive. Reminders that you can’t call this creation yours forever, that oneness with a mother isn’t the ultimate goal. Reminders that oneness belongs to the Father, the one who only observed as one body became two and yet takes all the credit for this miracle. And you do thank God for giving you this gift. A gift you both purchased and wrapped with your own blood, sweat, and tears.2
And your faith grows stronger each day that passes. For you must have faith that when the time comes for your body to relinquish its most precious prize, your body will know what to do. You must have faith that the nine months of swollen breasts and ankles, nausea, discomfort, and sleepless nights will be worth the beautiful masterpiece you’ll present to the world.
And when the pain begins, you know this is the day. The day you must surrender to the pain. The day you must breath. The day you must let let go of control and let your body do its job. And you must relax when you want to push and push when you just want to give up. But, when that pink and slippery new life is laid on your chest after you’ve felt like you’ve spent hours lingering deep in the valley between life and death, you can finally let the tears flow. And you lovingly look down on your new creation and you know you are God.
But not God in a way that men view God. God view men as power. And while you feel powerful, its not the power that makes you feel Godly. Its the love and connection. Its the tiny fingers that reflexively wrap around yours. The soft coo that comes with a full belly. The sleep that comes with safety. The knowledge that for a short time, you are the center of another human being’s universe and while there is pride in that thought, there is also humility.
So, it is hard to understand how men preach God as the ultimate creator. That He created woman from a man’s rib. That He formed all of us in our mother’s wombs, as if mothers played no role, and that He should receive all the glory.3 But I know that can’t be true. I was not created by a Father alone. And I wasn’t created immaculately, or from a simple tug of a rib. Creation is never that easy. But creation is God. And creation isn’t of men, though they do make contributions.
However, I understand why men want to claim this process as their own. Why they want to erase the ones who know more about creation than they ever will. Afterall, I can’t think of anything more spiritual or powerful than watching a woman’s body give birth. The best of new fathers watch birth in awe and wonder, wishing they had the connection that exists in the cord they are beckoned to help cut. It can be hard for men to understand how both softness and power can exist in the same moment. How amidst the blood and gore, there can also be beauty. But, they’ve seen it, and some of them have felt it, even if they can’t quite comprehend it.
This is something that was biologically built into my own female body. The soft cushions that my body created during pregnancy to nourish the life that expanded in my womb. Cushions that covered the muscles and sinews of a young female athlete that could no longer be seen under the softness they called motherhood. And I’ve been round and full, while my belly has been taught and tight. Parts of my body surrundering to make space. Some muscles weakening, while others stretched.
I fully understand how the softening and opening of my cervix and subsequent push to release is a fine balance of brute strength and measured restraint. I fully understand what it means to relinquish the power and control of breasts that were never meant to fully belong to me. To watch them swell and fill with sweet milk of my own making. To accept and embrace the changes that my body underwent in order to grow another. Because creation isn’t just about power and product, creation is a process. A symbiotic dance of both possession and surrender. Knowing when to exert and when to release.
And sometimes I ponder about how patriarchal religions preach of being “born again.” Their sacred rites and rituals mimicking and shadowing the birth process owned by women. They recognize the strength and power in birth and desire to claim it as their own. Sometimes I think it would be easier to just call her God, instead of prioritizing a spiritual “rebirth” governed by men. Because in being born again, we seem to forget the magnificence of the the birth process perfected and performed by women on everyone’s behalf. We don’t even recognize her or her body as God, or even Godly. Men take all the symbols garnered from her body and it’s creationary processess and make them their own.
Baptism by water. Submerged by men. Lifted out in the name of a Father and a Son. Born of Jesus. Born of God. Spiritual rebirth superceding the birth of a mother. Her sacrifice replaced with the cross, even thought it was never a competition. Her womb replaced by the tomb. Being fed the soured milk of men4 before being introduced to the meat of the Gospel in synagogues and temples, where the holy of holiest lie in chambers led by men.
And yet I know that the holiest of holies is within my heart and womb. That milk can nourish just as meat and sit together at the same table.5 So, what need have I to be born again of God, when I was born of woman? When woman herself bore God. When woman has held every man that has come to this earth in her womb, only to watch them descrate and devalue the holy house from which they were born. The true house of God.
There’s been a recent conversation about how every mother that conceives a female carries the eggs off her grandchildren within her as they develop in her daughter. A connection that illustrates how creation flows through generations of women that we hold in our bodies.
I sometimes think of God and a Heavenly Mother sitting around a tree on Christmas morning, the Father being painfully unaware of all the gifts his wife labored over and carefully placed under the tree, but willing to accept thanks when his children bypass her and shower him with thanks upon the opening.
Isiah 44:24, 49:5. Jeremiah 1:5
1 Corinthinas 3:2
I find it interesting in the strictest of Jewish Kosher laws, meat and dairy cannot be consumed together and wonder if there might be some deeper symbolism in that separation.