Did Mary Breastfeed Jesus?
:::As The Holy Lands Continue to Wage War, A Reminder That Women Are Stronger:::
I took some time away from writing these past couple of weeks. Mainly due to the discomfort of hemorrhoids but also because of my inability to sleep at night. Cold sweats resulting from the waves of terror I have been feeling regarding bringing another child into a world seemingly incapable of abandoning the views that result in such things as species extinction, endless wars, oil addiction, iPhone addiction, sugar addiction, climate catastrophe, strip malls, industrial farming, western education, white supremacy, instant noodles, social media, shitty music played late on bad speakers, the democratic party, the republican party, dams, pesticides, Starbucks, satellites that distract us from stars, you know… modernity, it’s all made it hard for me to sleep recently or access the confidence now needed to properly welcome a new child into this realm. Come to think of it, this is all likely the reason for the hemorrhoids too. Interesting.
My wife on the other hand, who will of course be the one who actually carries and grows and bears and initially primarily tends to this growing baby seems to be doing just fine. It isn’t that she is ignorant to the state of the world. In many ways, not coming from a line of white privilege that can so easily shelter some, like me, from the way things really are, she knows far more intimately the dangers and uncertainties we now face. Yet she is nonetheless poised, courageous and even joyful in the face of all the news being rudely vomited over us from all directions suggesting the only solution is to fall in line and play the game.
I feel this isn’t merely the result of not having herself been educated in the hyper analytical, overly rational, science-saturated, technologically obsessed ways in which I was. Of course that has a lot to do with it, but after 42 years of observation it is becoming increasingly clear to me that women, by design, are smarter and stronger than men in many of the ways that matter most. Especially when it comes to leadership. They are biologically built for creating and nourishing life and regardless of whether or not they choose to identify as a “woman” or have children, or embody any of the usual stereotypes associated with “being a woman”, it seems abundantly clear to me, after observing utterly incapable men “leaders” around the world my entire life (myself being one of them for remarkable stints of time) that women, whether they have a vagina or not, are simply better at knowing how to navigate tense situations than men are, they are, generally speaking, better builders of culture, of community, of anything really. And we all suffer for not acknowledging this, for not allowing more females to be placed in places of power across the board.
I recall growing up in that strange era of sitcoms where a particular narrative was constantly woven through nearly every show that portrayed women as somehow weak, overly sensitive, emotionally out of control, etc. And to be fair, I have found myself in certain cultural corners of the world where this incessant narrative has in fact resulted in the creation of such a social personality. Yet wherever I find myself with women (and men for that matter) who are raised even slightly outside the constricting confines of modern misogynist tales offered by the so-called “civilized”, wildly different archetypes emerge. And no, the men are not somehow any less strong in these settings, in fact they are usually much stronger than we typically see nowadays, their strength now free to be expressed in more ways than the boring, dangerous and outdated “hard man”/ “tough guy”, bomb-the-enemy immediately/fire-the-“loser” kind of world we sadly have been conditioned into understanding life from within in recent history. HERstory, as it turns out is much more expansive, and inclusive.
My wife and I just celebrated our wedding anniversary. Well, kind of. We took a trip to the big city of Chiang Mai to attend a concert by our beloved molam singing sister, Rasmee. Unfortunately however, just as I was about to park our car, not more than a few blocks from the concert venue, I heard the hiss of a deflating tire. So, instead of dancing together, we spent our rare romantic evening out in a dusty alleyway waiting for the tow-truck, or, as we are in Southeast Asia, the tow-motorbike.
My wife knows me well. Better than I know myself. She knew that I would immediately view the deflating tire as a mythological symbol of sorts, a divine sign from the Great Beyond reflecting to me the nature of my life thus far. And to be sure, this is precisely what happened. As the tire lost its air, I too experienced a grand cosmic deflation within and sunk into an existential despair regarding my seeming inability to succeed at expressing to my wife how much I love her. I had been planning for that night for weeks and had crystalized an image of perfection in my mind of how it was all to pan out. Like many fragile white men, when things didn’t go my way, I whined like a baby. The tears masked as being for her were in truth self-centered and quickly escalated into self hate. My wife, used to caring for a baby, did not waste her energy yelling at me or being angry with me for not paying better attention to the curb, knowing that, just like yelling at a child, this would only make the situation worse. Instead, my beloved simply held space for me, allowed me to wail, to overthink temporarily and go through all the strange emotional tantrums all uninitiated modern men seem to frequently fumble through, further aggravating the pesky piles in the hidden alleys bellow the surface. And at the right moments, when she could spot little cracks in my ongoing, senseless diatribe, she smiled at me and made me laugh, healing my silly charade with patience, kindness and skill. Without saying a word, she taught me how to better navigate should a similar situation again arise. And this, my friends, is what leadership looks like.
My wife is not as prone to the same embarrassments, fears, or unhelpful reactions to life’s inevitable discomforts that I seem to regularly experience. Oh, she suffers as we all do, morning sickness for one thing plagues her daily as our new one grows bit by bit inside her beautiful belly. When she is angry, it is artfully conducted with brilliant primal outrage. When she is in pain, it is rightfully expressed. But unlike the whining of white men who don’t get what they want and then end up starting a friggin’ war, her emotional rivers seem to follow some natural code beyond my grasp that even in its fiery wildness still offers grace. When the right societal conditions are in play she (and most women) addresses her dukkha with more dignity, skillful means and noble curiosity than I (and most men), her modus operandi being rooted more firmly in a space of Peace that seems to extend outward from an ancient, timeless and unfathomably strong sensual/mythical/natural alignment with Place, real Culture and a relatively intact, well-metabolized memory. It is inspiring, humbling and very attractive. I love her deeply.
I recently listened to a talk by founding member of the American Indian Movement, the late Oglala Lakota activist Russell Means about how his people honored women’s natural relation to Earths cyclical rhythms in ways we now can hardly conceive of. (This talk is worth a listen, worth several. Listen with friends, discuss.). You could tell in his tone the depth and sincerity of his respect. The more I observe how men are in this post modern realm I can’t help but wonder what it would be like if we had more female leaders, or if, at the very least, more men leaders like Russell Means, who truly understood the strength of women. What would it be like to honor those amongst us more attuned to the needs of others than men generally are? In truth, it certainly seems as though women are already running anything that works well from behind the scenes anyway, we just seldom pay enough attention to recognize this fact.
When the tire was finally fixed, long after the concert had ended, my wife and I returned to our friends’ home who had kindly prepared a room for us to stay in. As parents and farmers our bedtime is usually around 8:30. It was nearly midnight. Needless to say we were tyred (no pun intended). I just wanted to go straight to bed but she miraculously managed to inspire me to muster up the energy to first take a shower and tend to my troubled rear end, which strangely enough I had nearly forgotten about. My super-heroine half-side, not being as squeamish as I am when met with the mental image of lost bowels returning into the black void from whence they came, quietly, with great care and a noticeable sly grin on her tired yet content face, mixed together a handful of herbs she had gathered from the forest surrounding our friends’ garden home and delicately prepared a hemorrhoid-healing poultice for my belching booty. I am pleased to share that, as of now things seems to be, relatively speaking, back to normal.
Now this, my dear friends, is what true love looks like. Far more heartfelt than a box of chocolates, or a night on the town. To put it mildly, I was touched. And I can’t express enough how grateful I feel to have a lifelong partner like her. As we age together, our love deepens, in unforeseen ways. I wish this depth of love for everyone.
With the worst of the hemorrhoids/night tremors now gone, I find myself sleeping again, writing again, tending to the gardens, playing with our daughter and finding time to breathe deeply again, and experience once more moments of great peace amidst the heaviness of these liminal days. Long inhales followed by long exhales with special awareness being given to the Space Between each revolution, that auspicious place of pause that seems to mirror the Winter Solstice, and these auspicious times in which we all find ourselves now wading aimlessly through; a mysterious dark void of uncertain possibility met with a humble knowing that all that once seemed infinite is most assuredly now in flux. We are aging.
Man makes plans and the Goddess laughs…
Last week, in between all the hemorrhoidal dancing I managed to teach a few classes for a week long course being held at our farm looking deeply at our relationship with food. My sessions were devoted to looking at how our identities and values form from the stories that emerge overtime as a result of our shared intimacy with each aspect of bringing food to our tables. It starts of course with the seeds, always with the seeds. Where are they from? Who tended to them originally? Who tends to them now? What songs do we remember being sung when such seeds were sown? Or do we, as is often the case in these strange times, have no such memory, all of our stories now merely relegated to short corporate diddy’s force-fed us on our way to jobs and schools we also have no genuine connection to?
These conversations inevitably bring up grief. And laughter too. Tears rolled down the cheeks of a couple from Israel who shared with us a Shabbat song they had sung as children in a place they now cannot return to that was an appeal to God to help them remember what their long ago ancestors knew. A refugee from Myanmar told us how her family, before the war, ate every meal in silence, being mindful of the details of each bite. Thai friends spoke of the sounds of mortars being banged as somtom (papaya salad) was made throughout the village in a subtle daily competition to see who could make the best and serve the most. And without fail, every tale told wove its way back to mothers’ generous hands. In times of hunger, sadness, confusion and fear, mother was always near, leading, feeding…
For many, the noise of modernity has silenced our ability to feel empathy. We create stories of us and them as easily as corporate food systems convince us we can get a hamburger “my way”, with no story told of the many seen an unseen inter-realtions, how we only get things our way because of countless others collaborating in masterful ways that are only understood because of thousands of years of wisdom transmission. It would be foolish of us here then to suggest women are somehow superior. We have to dissolve this strange tendency to over simplify. Multiple truths exist and we interare. I am because you are, as the Bantu saying goes… And let us not forget to ask…
Who rained the rains that grew the grass to feed the cows whose milk you drink? Whose sounds birthed the songs that gave the butcher the courage needed to slit the throat of your beef? Whose deep intergenerational wisdom reminded the sower of corn to keep alive the soil and water that allows the corn to grow? Distant and compartmentalized, we attempt to return to right relation not by remembering these songs or by inviting our supposed enemies over for dinner but instead by scarfing down a premade sandwich from 7/11 while voicing our misguided grievances wildly and without restrain over social media, out of context, in random, disjointed soundbites, unaware that in doing so we are but encouraging yet further divisions.
Meanwhile, Mother listens…
As I am sure many of you can relate to, the waterfall of challenging emails screaming grief into my inbox regarding my many admitted shortcomings recently is impressive. Dear old friends who know me well, claiming I am an anti-semite. People I don’t even know suggesting I don’t say “cease fire” enough, or in the “right” ways. Etc.
…I just listen…
As my dear wife did for me, I listen.
I am certain there is much truth in what all these beautiful humans say. Life is not so black and white. I have so much to learn. And if I rush to be “right”, I will miss out on hearing what may be something I need to hear, something of which I was previously unawares. I feel grateful for all the teachers in my life and the curious ways in which they show up. Sometimes with kindness and sometimes with rage masked as “Non-Violent Communication. Sometimes they look like a coyote and sometimes like a sage. I welcome them all. It is best when we eat together.
Please, come eat with me…
As awful images fill my mind of countless children dying in the Middle East, falling dead from bombs falling from the air, bombs my country made, the father in me weeps. As images too fill my mind of the countless greater-than-human kin dying all around our home here in Thailand from agrochemicals poisoning the air and soil and water, the farmer in me weeps. Yet I refuse to allow myself to fall too deeply into despair and hate… I act when I can, inviting the pesticide spraying neighbors over to feast and I listen…
Pausing. Giving Space and Time… I visualize the strength, the patience, and courage given to me so often by my wife, by my mother, by The Earth, by all mothers, of the Blessed Mother Herself whom we seem to overlook during the holiday season and I aspire to dedicate my life to the support of Them. I aspire to feed Her, as She has fed me. I aspire to sing Her songs and make Her feel safe, protected, cared for and loved. I vow to lay down my sword and wage peace…
The Holy Earth Herself is a Woman. Before religion and politics shrouded the true meaning of the Solstice and its relation to the womb we knew what it meant to honor Her properly in this Holy time. For certainly He would not be here were it not for Her. Nor would our songs, our stories, our food. I know very little of the depth of this ancient knowing. Being a child of these forgetful times, it’s still unclear to me how a proper realignment with collective honoring of noble monthly purifications might look like in relation to our planets women, not to mention what it might look like to again rightly observe Gaia Herself’s annual turnings. But a Still Small Voice in me whispers on these long holy nights. Under the hum of mans forgetful arrogance, I can hear a woman making dinner for her children, still singing, laughing, crying wisely. I long not to control Her, but to love, honor and remember Her.
May the Winter Solstice and the return of Light offer you peace.
Sometimes I wonder
if Mary breastfed Jesus.
if she cried out when he bit her
or if she sobbed when he would not latch.
and sometimes I wonder
if this is all too vulgar
to ask in a church
full of men
without milk stains on their shirts
or coconut oil on their breasts
preaching from pulpits off limits to the Mother of God.
but then i think of feeding Jesus,
birthing Jesus,
the expulsion of blood
and smell of sweat,
the salt of a mother’s tears
onto the soft head of the Salt of the Earth,
feeling lonely
and tired
hungry
annoyed
overwhelmed
loving
and i think,
if the vulgarity of birth is not
honestly preached
by men who carry power but not burden,
who carry privilege but not labor,
who carry authority but not submission,
then it should not be preached at all.
because the real scandal of the Birth of God
lies in the cracked nipples of a
14 year old
and not in the sermons of ministers
who say women
are too delicate
to lead.
— Kaitlin Hardy Shetler
*Learn more about Churches of Christ female preacher and poet, Kaitlin Hardy Shetler here.
*Listen to talks from Russell Means here.
*Final image by Natalie Lennard. Find more of her work here.
#MAYALLBEINGSBEHAPPYANDFREE