If you want, 
the Virgin will come walking down the road   
pregnant with the holy
and say…

“I need shelter for the night, please take me inside your heart,
My time is so close.”

Then under the roof of your soul, you will witness the sublime
intimacy, the divine, the Christ
taking birth forever   
as she grasps your hand for help.  
For each of us   
is the midwife of God, each of us.

Yes, there, 
under the dome of your being does Creation 
come into existence eternally, through your woman, dear pilgrim--
the sacred womb of your soul,
as God grasps our arm for help.

If you want,  
the Virgin will come walking  
down the street  
pregnant with light and  
…sing.

--St John of the Cross from Love Poems to God by Daniel Ladinsky

We talked about this poem at a solstice fire circle last weekend.  There was some juiciness around the ‘if you want’ nuances. And later some discussion  that it seems we have a choice for the timing of when we welcome the pregnant virgin into our hearts.  But…not the welcoming itself. That is inevitable—this lifetime or some other, we will break open. 

How many times have  we walked by the pregnant virgin and not even noticed ‘her’, to say nothing of engaging?  She has many faces: the young mother struggling with three toddlers in the grocery store.  The man with blank eyes on the median outside Home Depot.  The child who knows way too much for his young life. All these pregnant possibilities, these incarnations of God.  So yesterday I made note of the many times my heart was touched by the plight of someone.  Touched before I had a chance to put the filter on, “That guy is a panhandler; that mother needs better parenting skills; that child—well, someone needs to love that child, better than they do.”   I purposely kept the filter off for awhile yesterday before it became unbearable.

My prayer for this season is that  I can leave the filter off longer  so my heart can be broken anew with the suffering, each day.  And that this suffering, the fire in my belly, will transform me into I-know-not-what.  My deeper prayer is that my broken-open heart will lead me to cradle the soft fontanel of the world as if I were the new mother.  As if I could sing to that infant the song of creation and really know that nothing can harm our innocence, our connection with the heart of the universe.

Our time is so close.  What is the good if Mary gave birth two thousand years ago but we do not give birth to God every day?

We are all meant to be mothers of God - God is always needing to be born. –Meister Eckhart