Motherprayer: birthed

by bam

Motherprayer42

a book is born…

it’s just after dawn on a gauzy gray morning. the nubs of springtime are fattening on the branches. a splash of wake-up yellow here, cobalt blue there, as if someone’s dipped into the pots of children’s paints, begun to add zing to the gray and the grayer.

it’s soft outside, the day unfolds gently, as i step beneath the dome of fading stars. i stand still as still can be. i open my heart, unfurl a prayer without end. i’m casting to the breeze, to the morning’s airborne whirl, the whole of my little book. the book my heart insisted i birth.

it’s the deepest work of my mama heart, the one stack of love letters i wanted to leave behind, whenever behind comes along.

it’s a whisper to every motherer everywhere: you do magnificent work, holy work. what you do, day after day after day, long night after long night, year after year, it matters. deeply. you do the work that stands the best hope of healing the wounds and the tatters of this tired old world. the balm — the attention, the love without end — it pours from your heart, if you let it, if you will it. and the world so desperately needs it.

my deepest prayer on my little book’s birthing day is that as its pages are turned, tiny embers of light begin to be sparked, to flicker, to glow, as each and every someone who reads its words begins to unlock a litany of memories, of stories, of beauties, all her or his own.

and may those sparks kindle into flame that lights the way, that reminds you how blessed you are. as frame after frame in your story — your sweet story, your heart-wrenching story — is unspooled, is held up to the incandescence, may you find your heart stirring, remembering, re-living some holy hour. you might be the mother, you might be the one who was mothered. all that matters is that in pausing to pay deepest attention to the heart-work of mothering, you catch a glimpse of how sacred, how vital it is.

that’s my whispered prayer.

may it be so….

here’s an excerpt from Motherprayer, one of its essays, which ran in the Chicago Tribune two Sundays ago. It’s titled “Why We Do It,” something of an anthem to mothering and those who ply its healing, loving arts…