deep down
I stopped nursing my youngest child two years ago, but it still happens when I hear a particularly frantic newborn crying in the mall, or at church, or on an airplane. The vulnerable, lamb-like bleating goes straight through me - and strangely enough, my body reacts.
It used to happen all the time when I was breastfeeding. A few seconds after I’d start nursing, I’d feel a familiar tingle - a slightly painful prickle really - and I knew my milk was on the way. I was going to be able to soothe, comfort, feed, and care for my child.
After all the mocking, after all the spitting, after they stripped him naked in front of everyone, after she watched him carry that heavy cross all by himself, after they crucified him, after he cried out to God like a vulnerable little babe...
After all that, here’s what I know: Mary felt that familiar tingle - a slightly painful prickle really - and her milk let down for her son, for the people who hurt him, for the two criminals who were hanging beside him, for his friends who had abandoned him, for everyone and every living thing.
I know what happened on the cross was important. I know the Christ event changed the world as we know it. But somewhere, deep down in my body, I know that when Mary was bent over at the foot of the cross, her milk let down, drenching her shirt, leaking onto the ground, running right down that hill outside Jerusalem: soothing, comforting, feeding, and caring for the whole world.
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Thanks to Leandro Pena for capturing Michelangelo's breathtaking Pieta.
Monday, August 22, 2011 at 10:00PM
Reader Comments (10)
Beautifully written and expressed! Thank you!
This is stunning. As one who was also once a nursing mother, I know the "tingle" that persists, and the sense of longing it evokes in my body. To connect it with the Pieta, just breathtaking. Thank you.
You don't have to have nursed to react to newborn cry...I never did and am forever changed by our babies...
Their dad of course didn't and he seemed changed too...there is tenderness in me
For all thngs related to children that is visceral.thank you!
Liz,
I always love how you connect beautiful, natural, and physical things to events in scripture. Its something you do a lot in sermons at Old South, and its something that always resonates with me. I'll never forget that my first worship at Old South was your sermon on Emmaus Sunday last year, where you connected a feeling in yoga to the scripture. Amazing and beautiful! Although I have never had a child, this physical, almost tangible, reflection still resonates with me. Even if I don't know that tingling feeling!
Thank you! Keep writing beauty.
Wow, beautiful. I well know that familiar tingle. Connecting it to Mary brings the story into a whole deeper light!
I haven't nursed in over 12 years...but reading this I know exactly the feeling. Thanks for putting into such a meaningful way.
I remember the first time I saw the Pieta. I stood there, taken, for what seemed like ages. I bought a small replica, packed it inside a shoe in the bottom of my suitcase, and brought it all the way home. It sits front and center on my desk, reminding me of one of the most important connections I've been given in life -the one with my own mother-and one of the most important connections I've created-the one with my own child, and how both of these relationships have taught me the power of both joy and sadness, and of everlasting love.
In gratitude, mjm
How wonderfully frank and courageous, Liz. How rarely we permit ourselves to think of Mary and Jesus as real flesh, yet how important to be encouraged to do so. That is, after all, the greatest Gift. The feeling of the milk rushing through my body is history now, but never forgotten. The Idea that Marys milk, truly, deeply, the Milk of Human Kindness, might have poured into the earth for all of us in her moment of greatest pain, is an extraordinary Gift to contemplate.
Simply beautiful. What a powerful image of maternal love - both the Pieta and the idea of Mary letting down at the foot of the cross. After I weaned my first child, I felt that phantom tingle for months after my milk was gone. Our bodies have long and deep memories, and love is just as deeply embodied. Thank you for this - will be sharing.
Great post.
Thanks For sharing this.
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