She Was A Wanderer and A Stranger
It is a raw & wild song of my heart
a song of a wild woman, a song of a wild birth, a song of a wild love.
As I watched the many refugees walking across Europe in the past two years, my heart leaped out and ached. I saw children, elderly, families of all sizes and shapes….and pregnant women. I know that when I experienced pregnancy, I just wanted to create home – and that most horrible thing would have been to leave the comfort and security of home and not know where I was giving birth to my coming child.
I realized that Mary had known such a journey. A letting go of familiar, secure and comforting in her ‘yes’ to the great unknown. Over and over, she has become a symbol of courage to me. I used to view her as passive, faceless, weak, submissive and yielding. As I have studied her and noticed her through story after story, I have come to realize her profound courage, her tenacity, her fierce strength, her wildness, her faithfulness and her great love. She has become my hero over and over again.
I had an experience last Christmas of dreaming that I was in her womb…..I know that may sound weird, but I have given up on sounding normal!! Why try? I have come to accept that I have interesting experiences and so I will dare to talk about them. Anyways, as I was saying, I dreamt of being in her womb and of feeling the depth of her journey – the heaviness, the weight of it all. I dreamt of her lostness and her awareness of being a stranger in a foreign land. I dreamt of her birthing me in a wild and crazy place. I dreamt of her exquisite love as she kissed me for the first time and wrapped me up.
And then I thought of Christ looking at her now and his wild love for her too…and it all got wrapped up into melody and lyric and here it is…… As I Lay In Her Womb.
It is a raw & wild song of my heart
a song of a wild woman, a song of a wild birth, a song of a wild love.
May you know this love too this Christmas, even if you too are a wanderer and a stranger and have no place to lay your head. May you know the wildness of Love being born in you and through you.
Love Cathy
