This will be the first week that Christ Church is without our Rector’s physical presence among us. He has turned over his ramblings to us, with me, your Associate for Children Youth and Families, Mother Katie, as the gate keeper to these weekly reflections. In Tom’s final sermon to us on Sunday, May 2, he spoke of being formed in the Episcopal Church and that one of his greatest challenges during sabbatical is the wandering in the wilderness, apart from the worship in the church that he knows and loves. 

I have decided to make the focus of these summer ramblings a space for our community to share their encounters with the Divine. A chance for us to share our wilderness experience. In my almost two decades of ministry, I have heard the recounting of all sorts of experiences with God. From the slightest coincidence, to a vision of Jesus standing before them, and everything in between. For most of us, putting into words an experience where we have felt lifted into a different plane of existence is difficult. We don’t understand how it happened, so to break it down by using our earthly senses presents a challenge. Some common turn of phrases have been; “my breath caught in my throat,” or “I felt lightheaded,” or “all of a sudden, tears ran down my face,” or “I had a warm tingling sensation throughout my body” or “it hit me like a ton of bricks.” The retelling of these stories, for the listener can bring about both trust in a person or skepticism. But I say, if you felt it, there is truth in it.  

Some encounters can be predicted, like receiving communion for the first time after a long fast or singing “Amazing Grace” at a funeral. Some other experiences happen to us without any prior warning. And with this week being in between Mother’s Day Sunday and Pentecost Sunday, I want to tell you of an encounter I had with God that was a predictable surprise. 

Taylor and I were trying to start a family at the same time I was in discernment for the priesthood. On the same day I received my letter for Postulancy from the Diocese of Kansas, I also received a positive pregnancy test. The name Mother was in my future. 

The day I went into labor, I was so excited. Those cute little contractions at 7:00 am in the morning that had told us today was the day, quickly turned into world-turning-upside-down pain by 10:00 am. I said audibly to the gathered assembly,  “I can’t do this!” I don’t remember a response from the room, but I knew my declaration was of no use. My body was going to give birth whether my mind and spirit went with her or not. 

I will spare you the messy details, but there was a part during my labor that the pain took me to another realm. I was only aware of my body and the work that she had to complete. As I surrendered my mind and spirit to her, the family and medical workers that I knew were in the room soon became faceless shapes moving around me, aiding me in my labor. I was with God, and God was with me. I give a lot of credit to my yoga practice for my being able to surrender and breath through the rush of labor pains that would wash over me like a wave on the shore and then to rest fully in between. Probably not too long, but what seemed like an eternity later, Joan Zipporah was placed on my chest and she locked eyes with me. And soon after that, Joni was receiving her first meal from me on the outside, an experience that was almost as painful as giving birth. She had made it to this human world. The feeling I had, could be described with all the feeling words that exist, but at its purest was Joy! I had also transformed into another human experience of knowing, that of a mother.

During our second year of seminary, the Anglican Theologian Sarah Coakley was the keynote speaker for our fall lecture series. She was promoting her book, God, Sexuality and the Self. I’ll admit to you that most of what she said went over my head. However, she kept throwing up slides depicting the trinity and the figure of Jesus in different ways that I had not seen before. The one that caught my eye the most was the print of Hildegard’s Crucifixion and Eucharist. In this print,  the figure of a crucified Jesus hangs directly above the altar. And the piercing that Jesus received in the Gospel of John, seems to be not only at his side, but also from his breast, where blood flows from both and is gathered by a celestial figure (perhaps Hildegard) into a chalice that is recognizable as the one on the altar below. 

Since I was two years into sacrificing my body to feeding a child still, I stood straight up and had a thought that hit me like a ton of bricks. In John’s Gospel, the piercing of Jesus sounds like a birth, with the water and blood coming forth. And the ongoing feeding that Jesus provides through the ritual he commanded us to continue, where we feed from his body, sounds a lot like breast feeding. It was a maternal look at Jesus, and God as well. 

Now I could tie off the umbilical cord of this experience quite nicely! Saying things like Jesus being in the garden and telling God, that he couldn’t possibly go through with suffering and killing bit, but he was too far along to quit at that moment. I could also say that Jesus possibly didn’t know how things were going to turn out, but surrendered to the pain anyway and being one with God through it all. But, I don’t have that bit all worked out yet. I only know what it is like to give birth to one human, not a church of humans. I did feel that day, companionship with Christ in an act of self-sacrificing love to one human being.