INSCRIBED IN THE BODIES OF MALE AND FEMALE - A FATHER AND A MOTHER

To survive I suckle her breasts
and cling to her hand after my birth
I am calm in the fold of her arms
Her heartbeat resonates from the womb
Always the comforting rhythm of my life
Wherever I go - how bleak the event
Her heartbeat repeats 'I love you' my child;
'I love you' my darling; 'I love you' forever
and ever and never forget 'I love you'.

What's broken is forged by her mysterious power to unite and shape and form a body from fractured pieces of egos smashed to the floor by other more damaged egos.  She heals my body and the bruises of my soul; the dreams that are shattered find a new place to emerge and ever so fragile are nurtured by her 'til they survive as I did from her womb.  What for me is unable to be spoken is given words by her and I wonder, 'How did she know?' 'How did she know?'

What is this connection between my soul and hers, my body and hers, my heart and hers?  What do you say my soul about my mother?

From breast and womb, from heart to tomb, she is my reason for being here.  She carried me hidden in her body and agonized through my birth.  She suckled me to life and nurtured me to independence; to live for Love; to live for Life; to live for Good; to live for Joy; to live to Give and to love to Give and to give for Love.
 

My father loved my mother and his loving of her made him unite with her body to give me life. His strong arms upheld me in my fragile infancy.  He upheld me, protected me and procured all I needed in my fragile little humanity unable to sustain itself.  He rejoiced to be my father and that I was his son/daughter.  He love my mother for giving him his own child to reflect back to him himself.  He was happy to work, to plan, to build and provide for my future that I may be the human person I was intended to be. 

 

Her heart and love inspires him,
sowing seeds of possibilities in his mind,
to grow confidence in his heart,
to be the husband and father he needs to be.
He shields hers from deception and flattery,

from the predators of her beauty,
her innocent loveliness and her maternal dreams.
He does this by providing her with all the love he can create around her from within himself and their children.  He builds a kingdom in which she is queen.  His stability and love gives her confidence.

 

Her womb for cradling their conceptions,

His work for feeding their children,

Her heart for nurturing their dreams,

His mind for materializing her desires,

Her spirit uplifting him - giving him wings

His spirit strengthening hers for flight.

 

Together they nourish each other

Together they love their children

Together they gather the rays of dreams and untangle the knots of disappointments

and weave ever more beautiful aspirations;

and with vision create more beautiful landscapes
of wonder for their children to explore. 
The adventure of attempting something is more important to them than the possibility of failure.

 

And above all they listen

beyond the words to the heart's rhythms

And above all they read the body's language

of their beloved's desires unspoken

And threads become tapestries

And words become poems

And actions a collage of 'I love you's'

And all in all a symphony of love.

  

Who is there who can describe what Love is and what Love does; what Love hears and what Love sees and knows.  Not I - for Love is not about me but about Thee!



Fatherhood is scripted in every male as Motherhood is scripted in every female.  This is written in the body.  To state the obvious the woman has a womb for conceiving children and giving birth; she has breasts for breastfeeding her child and sustaining its infant life; the man has semen for sowing the seed of his child in his wife's womb.  His has a strong upper body for lifting and upholding, for toting and building to provide shelter for his family.  Everything is written in the flesh and blood, bone and sinew of the human being as to the function of each gender and the beautiful complementarity of the two genders. 

Science reveals the beauty of the DNA molecule and at its core is a 'laminin' which is in the shape of a cross.  Every cell of our humanity is perfected by the sufferings of our beloved Saviour in every cell of His Humanity.  Every regenerated part of us in the divine version of ourselves owes its divine beauty to the crucifixion of Jesus upon the cross of the human will divorced from the Divine.  In this crucifixion we were recreated male and female as originally intended healing the great divorce.

 

All this is most excellently spelled out by the late Saint Pope John Paul II in his Theology of the Body - a recommended reading for those who are readers.  But for those fortunate souls who observe with eloquent silence and reverence what is written in the script of Nature, in the bodies of male and female, the truth is obvious.  Yet, how it is so often overlooked.

The union of bodies is not overlooked however, but rather subverted into a search for how one can grasp at gratification of the other - the spirit of lust.  What is overlooked is "the nuptial meaning of the body" in which the gift of life is given to reflect the love of the two spouses and to smile back at them this love in the beautiful face of their baby.  When the gratification of sex is separated willfully from the responsibilities of this life giving power; it degrades the one who abuses the privilege given by the creative power of God.

The great privilege of sharing in the Fatherhood of God is so often divorced from the gift of sexual union and so mankind experiences the fruits of this divorce.  He becomes divorced in fact from himself - his own true identity; becoming lost in the maze of his sensual desires, obsessions and addictions.

Jesus is the remedy for all these divorces; but He uses his parents Joseph and Mary as the antidote for this great crime - a crime which sees so many of our children fatherless, homeless, abused in a myriad of ways and longing for the father who had them but they never had.  The demise of fatherhood is crying out for its remedy.  Motherhood will be thereby given its best chance of restoration also.  For without a true and holy fatherhood no mother and child can survive and thrive.