God Is A Yearning Mother

By Beth Osnes

Having just had a baby, I have some insight into why God may have divided itself into what we call creation. When the baby is inside the mother, there is a calm, complete feeling, knowing the baby is safe within, one with you, perfectly surrounded. Yet, there is an anxious dissatisfaction because this being, or potential for a being, is still a stranger, unknowable.

It is so close, so far within, that ironically you cannot know it. In birth, that vein-popping "Big Bang" process of separating baby from mother, God from itself, a wall is broken through -- a single entity becomes two.

Once the baby is out, there is the wild satisfaction of seeing your baby, holding it, sensually drinking in the child, knowing the child for all of its quirks, giggles, dents, and bruises. And there sets in a yearning for being closer than is possible, now that the distance between the two of you has granted you this perspective, this clear vision.

This yearning kicks its heels deep into you and will stay with you always, making you feel that you can never hold your child closely enough, that you will never look at her face long enough, that you can never spend enough time with her, even if you are together all day. This, I think, is love. Love seems to require separation. Or there can be no object and agent, two distinct beings.

And how did this entire cycle begin? I imagine that the creative force, I call God, in a courageous and desperate act, threw itself into the wall of time so there would be a part of itself thrust forward that it did not completely know. It wanted perspective. It wanted to love. So in the darkness, we, that God propulsion, see the light of like spirits in others from a distance. And we fall in love.

We kindle the God-spark within us, strengthening our own light through the instrument of our talents, so that when we return to God at the end of our time here on earth, God can welcome us. We can regard each other knowingly, and together, burn all the brighter.

Of course, in my experience, I have witnessed that all do not choose to travel towards the light, but rather, choose darkness in its many manifestations. This is a choice and it would seem, a necessary part of the formula. God must have known that you can only come to know something if part of it is unknown -- its choices. Perhaps God gave us freewill so it could come to know what another entity would do with the gift of creation. I imagine that God also wanted to see itself through another's perspective.

Maybe God just wanted to love. I look to myself and question why I want to create children. Thinking about it, I realize that most strongly, I want something to love. Also, I want the chance to witness what choices a child will make on its own.

I want to watch and see what this child will create in its lifetime, given the tools of my love, my help, its talents, the knowledge of the time, and its own imagination. I want to see myself through my child's eyes. For any of this to be possible, I know my child must be free. I know I'm leaving myself open to feel sadness, to disagree with some of its choices, to even feel rejection at some time -- but I want my child to be free.

For when the gift of love is freely offered to me from this child, whith whom I have trusted with all that I am, I know my heart will swell beyond capacity with joy. If I know this about myself, then I deduct upwards that I know God. I, a leaf on God's tree, have God's design within me.

Therefore, I believe that God is profoundly human and feels all the yearning of the heart that we suffer, but six-billion fold. Having shared the light of its soul with each being, God, I imagine is wallowing in the most profound, wistful sadness, teetering on ecstatic joy. The fluctuations of each human heart like a parent is felt, absorbed, taken in, caressed, walked the floor for, and cried over.

God is a yearning mother.