Journey of An Aspiring Allie, Part II

...continued from yesterday, this is the second in a series of posts about a personal journey I have been on. The posts include a video tour. I hope you'll read posts in this series in order starting with yesterday's.

Motherhood meets us where we lack imagination.


In my case it met me in my own fears about the unknown of "the future," in my own need to control "outcomes" to feel safe, in the stories I was telling myself of scarcity...that the world is a place where we need to fight to make sure our needs are met.


From those first moments together in the special care nursery, M. has been the apple of my eye. I love him. I adore him, and the wholeness of who he is has almost seamlessly been incorporated into the very spirit of my being.

Each day, the creative, loving exchanges between myself and my son are the source of new imaginings. I am braver now, venturing into the future with a sense of optimism that perhaps only a parent of young children can have. Of course I worry like a parent of young children now too, I worry and fret and feel the weight of the world on my shoulders-- on one hand-- but on the other hand, I have found a new grace.

M. does not yet know that the rest of us, the adults in the world, have lost so much of our ability to imagine. He is not self-limiting. He can not be. He is still blessed with the infancy of being in which the greatest concentration of creativity lies.


This gift I have been given is but a precious and fleeting one, to glimpse the infinite, the ultimate. To feel GOD. I cannot explain this creative synergy, this most delicious spark, any other way.

And it is only in the form of a muted veil, periodically blown across my face-- especially when M. was younger and I was yet a newborn to this treasured space in my spirit-- that I worship the idols of limited imaginings, of futures defined by concepts of limited spiritual value. That I grieve, for example, possibilities of college or marriage as I have scripted them, fearful that because M. has this or that neurological challenge in his life, that he will somehow miss out on something I have deemed necessary for a "good life."

"Real idolatry in the Jewish and Christian tradition does not have to do with the worship of statues or pagan altars. Idolatry is rather the profoundly serious business of committing oneself, or betting one's life, on finite centers of value and power as the source of one's confirmation of worth and meaning, and as the guarantor of survival with quality." --James Fowler


M. has challenges and strengths. He is an active, engaged person, and an everyday two year old too. M.'s world is wide open, and without hesitation he is inviting me in.

In that spirit, I bring to you a second video. It was in one of those most vulnerable moments of falling out of grace, that I first saw this video. It was uncomfortable for me to watch (probably in part because of my own sensory issues that make the first 3.15 minutes or so hard for me, and probably in part because of how it rubs against the alignment of ultimate truth and the ways I have found myself disconnected from "God" by fear). Yet, I've found myself drawn back to watch it again and again, each time a little more captivated and a little more hopeful.

Video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JnylM1hI2jc&feature=related