It seems to me that all the things that matter most to me in my life are things that I have strived for and thrived with and lived because of.
Besides avoiding my mother’s overweening praise, the obvious first-up on my list was the process of birthing, actually bringing forth into the light a brand new life, and then immediately feeling the rush of joy and terror at once.
Perhaps I exaggerate, but for me, beside the trauma of sexual intercourse itself for which I was totally unprepared, birthing was first up. My first child was a daughter with amazing lung power and great weight for a firstborn: 8 pounds 13 ounces, born on the 13th of January, 1962, well before there was safe medication to ease the pain, not to mention much good literature on things like breast feeding and childcare. It is embarrassing to admit that I was both dazzled and intimidated by my beautiful new daughter—so afraid that I was sure I’d break her arm while putting on a wee undershirt, not to mention getting the diaper pin on securely without stabbing her, all at once and with adoration!
She was, and is still, capable of engaging my awe and my love at the same time. I went on creating, yes, more biological children, all equally beloved, and also my own dreams and sins. Unlike what our religions tell us, there is no end to such potency, such striving and thriving, such unjust justice, even to such believing disbelief. Ever.
I wonder if this is how the Divinity the Bible calls God/Creator kept on slowly striving, paying meticulous attention to each tiny detail and its placement, laboring and even feeling pained by the effort itself as Life turned into Being? Would Creator-God have felt such pride and awe at once?
The Holy Bible itself even ends with something like, I’m coming and I’m not telling you when or why.
And beloved Job, finally and after a whole life of nagging and being righteous, received a guided tour of Creation and ended up with something like WOW!
It is enough to strive, thrive and be alive— never imagining an end. I am ready to give up all that language about justice in order simply to proclaim:
Divinity isn’t moral, only holy?
