Last Spring I blogged here about prayer and a "consuming hole at my core that is emptiness and loneliness and also what it means to be alive". And I can't get the thought out of my head.
I'm glad others raise the issue as well. Joy, Kate, and I talk about it a lot - this unquenchable thirst. This melancholy. This "God-shaped hole".
And we talk about our reaction to it. To fill it or numb it; to watch shows or eat treats. To prove each day was busy and successful. To reminisce about better times, to dream about better times.
I found a quote that hits the nail: "I am homesick for a place I am not sure even exists. One where my heart is full. My body loved. And my soul understood."
In last Spring's prayer post I reflected on a scene that still comes to mind: An incident where Wren was sick. She could not be consoled. She clung to Joy crying, "I want Mommy".
I know that feeling.
I want what "Mother" represents, beyond the bounds of human capacity. I want the female divine.
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I don't know what we're supposed to do with this emptiness. How to be with it.
It has driven humanity to explore and create; to chase the sun past the horizon; to paint the likeness of animals on the inside of caves; to reach up and touch the moon; to splice the cells inside us; to build, to cure, to discover, to invent, to achieve.
And still we are incomplete.
And that's a good thing. If we could fill the hole ourselves, as maybe we still assume we can, our entire motive would be to compete and consume. But that unquenchable piece of us pulls and pulls until we realize we need more than the story we can weave with our own spool; more than what we alone can know or do. For all our success as evidenced in salaries or Facebook posts or checklists, we feel incomplete. And so there must be something we cannot quantify. Something unnameable, even, and certainly not human. Maybe God. Maybe Goddess. Maybe the spirit of life around us; an inter-being, and a rediscovery of lost relationship and balance. I've touched all of these, and I have felt great, big feelings of connection and fulfillment, heart, body and mind.
And still I've ached with want.
How do we respond to this urge in a way that does not pillage and consume? In a way that does not numb or distance? What is left but to accept and love our incomplete selves?
It may be that women have an advantage in this arena. What distinguishes women from men if not holes and caverns. Empty wombs. Shedding of walls.
And mother's must know it even more acutely: That the world needs the low and empty spaces.
It has driven humanity to explore and create; to chase the sun past the horizon; to paint the likeness of animals on the inside of caves; to reach up and touch the moon; to splice the cells inside us; to build, to cure, to discover, to invent, to achieve.
And still we are incomplete.
And that's a good thing. If we could fill the hole ourselves, as maybe we still assume we can, our entire motive would be to compete and consume. But that unquenchable piece of us pulls and pulls until we realize we need more than the story we can weave with our own spool; more than what we alone can know or do. For all our success as evidenced in salaries or Facebook posts or checklists, we feel incomplete. And so there must be something we cannot quantify. Something unnameable, even, and certainly not human. Maybe God. Maybe Goddess. Maybe the spirit of life around us; an inter-being, and a rediscovery of lost relationship and balance. I've touched all of these, and I have felt great, big feelings of connection and fulfillment, heart, body and mind.
And still I've ached with want.
How do we respond to this urge in a way that does not pillage and consume? In a way that does not numb or distance? What is left but to accept and love our incomplete selves?
It may be that women have an advantage in this arena. What distinguishes women from men if not holes and caverns. Empty wombs. Shedding of walls.
And mother's must know it even more acutely: That the world needs the low and empty spaces.
