god as mother

I wonder if what I felt, feared, and learned as a young mother mirrors what God experiences when she tries to feed us.

In the Hebrew Bible, God’s love is maternal.

It’s not possible to parent without experiencing risk, weakness, pain, and transformation.

I see love incarnate in suffering flesh, a body bearing a body in pain for love.

Parker Palmer writes of the divided life: having sensed that what’s within us is somehow unacceptable, we live contrary to it. In so doing we snuff our own inner light and suffocate our soul.

American life seems divided about Mother’s Day.