As a maternal health advocate, I cherish the season of Advent as an opportunity to connect a beloved Christian story to the lives of women today who struggle to bring new life into the world under horrific circumstances. Every year I write something about Mary’s pregnancy and birth. In many ways she is no different from the “Marys” around the world who are young, poor, and unexpectedly pregnant, and who go on to give birth in unclean environments. I often pose the question to communities of faith, wasn’t the Christmas miracle equally that Mary survived the birth? How different would Jesus’s life have been if he’d never known his mother?
I continue asking these questions, but after my daughter was born last October, I have found my Advent reflections shifting to mirror my own parenting experiences. I began to think beyond Mary’s birth and into her early months of motherhood. One morning last December, after a particularly awful night’s sleep, I came downstairs to hear “Away in a Manger” playing on the radio. When it got to the line “But little Lord Jesus/No crying he makes,” I rolled my eyes dramatically and pictured Mary doing the same as she bounced a screaming baby Jesus in her arms. Continue reading “What If Jesus Had Gone to Daycare? by Katey Zeh”
I’m not particularly fond of my periods – they’re painful, full of cramps. But they are a part of who I am, and I’m not going to apologize for them. We women, especially those of us belonging to the sub-continent, have been shamed or embarrassed into silence, while being reminded that motherhood is the most exalted position a woman could ever hope for. I mean, isn’t that paradoxical – if it weren’t for the bloody nemesis (pardon the pun), we would never get to experience motherhood.
We were playing six-degrees of separation, I think. I don’t know if there are rules to follow. It was after dinner, and we were talking about people we had encountered and their linkages to others. Surprisingly quickly, we found ourselves connected to Dwight D. Eisenhower, Elvis, Winston Churchill, and the Queen of England, herself. My mom had autographs from Jerry Lee Lewis, Duke Ellington, the Globe Trotters, and a gaggle of NFL players and professional golfers. She once chatted up Tori Spelling in a bathroom in Canton, Ohio at a Football Hall of Fame Induction ceremony. My husband worked in film in Los Angeles and Cleveland, meeting a crowd of stars and politicians over the years. One time he had a chance, face-to-face encounter with Prince (the artist himself!) as one rode up and the other rode down an escalator at a Borders in Chicago. As the distance between them closed, my husband quietly acknowledged him, saying, “Bravo!” Prince, whose head was angled away so as to avoid having to say anything, apparently, after a moment of consideration, looked back over his shoulder as they passed and silently mouthed, “Thank you.” I still give my husband kudos here… I mean, what else do you say to Prince? This connection, moreover, gave us our links to Morris Day, Jerome, Apollonia, and Shelia E., so we were all excited at his impressive list. I had a far less remarkable cast of characters to contribute, but I could offer a Vatican insider acquaintance, providing thereby a papal connection, which gave us our links to several world leaders. I felt I had contributed my part, even without autographs and celebrities.
When the wheel of the year turns towards fall, I always feel the call to retreat, to cocoon, to pull away. I also feel the urge for fall de-cluttering—my eyes cast about the house for things to unload, get rid of, to cast away. I also search my calendar for those things which can be eliminated, trimmed down, cut back on. I think it is the inexorable approach of the winter holiday season that prompts this desire to withdraw, as well as the natural rhythm of the earth which so clearly says: let things go, it is almost time to hibernate.
“A woman can spin a primal umbilical rope within her womb through which she passes life-energy to the future.” –Melissa Raphael
Feminism and Religion 