In each birth, a new being?

Reflection Title:

New-birth of Wonder

Reflection Content:

Births come in many and varied ways throughout nature, but few births are as vivid as that of a newborn child. Conception, Jewish tradition tells us, comes about with the presence of a woman, man, and the divine. Gestation of an idea may take years, but that of a womb child only takes nine months. Labour and birth-giving may be quick or arduous, a labour of love; at the end of it, a new face greets the world. For many, if not all, life shifts in that moment of welcoming. A cord is tied, the infant is held close for a dance around a sunlit room. It is the new-birth of wonder: the world no longer imaginable without her.

Story Title:

Mother’s Womb

Story Content:

Lord, You search me and You know,
It is You Who know when I sit and I rise,
You fathom my thoughts from afar.
My path and my lair You winnow,
and with all my ways are familiar.
For there is no word on my tongue
but that You, O lord, wholly know it.
From behind and in front You shaped me,
and You set Your palm upon me.
Knowledge is too wondrous for me,
high above—I cannot attain it.
When can I go from Your spirit,
and when from before You flee?
If I soar to the heavens, You are there,
if I bed down in Sheol—there You are.
If I take wing with the dawn,
if I dwell at the ends of the sea,
there, too, Your hand leads me,
and Your right hand seizes me.
Should I say, “Yes, darkness will swathe me,
and night will be light for me,
Darkness itself will not darken for You,
and night will light up like the day,
The dark and the light will be one.
—Psalm 139:1–14

Contemporary Story Title:

Plentiful Milk

Contemporary Story Content:

In 1956, seven suburban Chicago mothers began meeting together to socialize and to share advice on parenting. Mary White, one of the founding members of La Leche, had been breast-feeding her youngest child at a church picnic when many women had approached her, expressing their desire to breast-feed their own children. Most of the woman had been counselled not to breastfeed. Together they formed a group and called themselves the “La Leche League,” advocating breast-feeding. At the time it was illegal to use the word “breast” in print, and the group was finding it difficult to advertise meetings or publish newsletters. The name came from a small Catholic shrine in St. Augustine Florida called, “Our Lady of Leche,” or, “Our Lady of Happy Delivery and Plentiful Milk.” This small Spanish shrine, maintained by a monastery of Franciscan friars, contains a statue of the Virgin nursing the Christ-child.

Artwork Title:

Reading Freud

Artwork Content:

In 1954, Raquel Tibol, a Mexican art critic, historian and author, interviewed Frida Kahlo, and asked her to describe her painting and its relation to Freud’s 1937 essay, “Moses the Man and Monotheistic Religion.” Frida’s response:

“I read the book only once, and started the painting with my first impression. . . . What I tried to express most clearly and intensely was that the reason people need to invent or image heroes and gods is because of their fear—fear of life and fear of death. . . . I painted the sun as the center of all religions, as the foremost god, as creator and reproducer of life. . . . Like Moses, there have been, and will be, a huge number of high and mighty people to transform religions and human societies. It can be said that they are a kind of messenger among the rulers and among the gods they invented to rule them.”
—Raquel Tibol, (born 1923). Frida Kahlo: An Open Life.