Writing Isaiah
Entry #13
July 29th 2013
Tom Ott
So here is something I can never know but find myself curious about: What is it like to give life to a being that is completely you and completely your partner and completely other?
Emily Joye McGaughy-Reynolds
I'm not sure why it's taken me so long to answer this question, given the fact that it's called to me over and over in the last months, ever since you let it float in my direction. Maybe I'm writing today because you're about to go on Sabbatical and I'm swimming in the anticipatory grief of not being in ministry with you for 3 months and this is my desperate attempt to stay connected in whatever way I can. Or maybe it's just time, in the way that writing beckons, egh demands, its own moments regardless of an author's intentions or plans.
Well, preacher, here's one thing I can say to you and know it'll be heard and understood: it's a lot like writing a sermon. Giving "life to a being that is completely you and completely your partner and completely other" is a lot like the homiletical process. 1) The author/channel 2) the Holy Spirit/inspiration & 3) the living Word as its received by those gathered, the witnesses, those willing to behold. As we often assure each other: it's a process totally mysterious, profound, complex, frustrating, alluring...powerful. I think you probably understand the conception and birthing processes better than most, just by virtue of what you do for a living. So many parts of pastoring are like mothering and so much of mothering is like pastoring. If we wanted to take it all out of parental and gendered terms, I'd say it's artistry, play, collage--cooking, puzzling, building a porch house even. :-D A mixing and mingling of the elements: the contemplative, the creative, the erotic, physical, mental and emotional discipline, divine-ing forth in hope, bearing down in pain and exasperation, weeping in joy, learning new tricks, finding new tools, applying new skills, reflecting on the rules, breaking some, breaking open, discovering love you never knew possible, lighting up--literally--and dying--literally-- like the incarnation calls us to do. I'm getting carried away.
Completely me. Completely JR. Completely other: Isaiah.
Just his name makes me take a deep breath. Was it arrogant to give him a name so early? Presumptuous--to do something as serious/permanent as place a title on something that hasn't even seen the light of day yet? Are names given or are they earned or are they discovered? "What's in a name?" Everything. Nothing. Definitely something. The entirety: Isaiah Joseph Reynolds. His first name is from my theological conviction, my favorite book of the Bible, it means: "YHWH is salvation." Don't I know it? The middle is his father's, his grandfather's and great grandfather's name: Joseph. Patrilineal heritage. Reynolds: a descendancy, a blood line, a family marking. All three of these names have meaning and significance, and yet there is significance to be had apart from anything we bestow upon him in the choosing of the name; there is the meaning he will add to that name as he lives into a life all his own. Isn't this just an miniature illustration of life in general? There's what we get put upon us and then there's who we become. Can we ever even discern where those parts collide and where they remain separate? I'm not sure.
Will I ever be able to look at my son and not see myself or not see JR or not see some blend of us? And in that looking, what am I seeing? A projection? A reality? Something in between or a little bit of both? Or does Isaiah transcend, in a completely imminent way, all that we are? I'm not sure.
You know as I think about this, as I write about this, I'm reflecting on what I "see" and what I "experience" of myself in Aurora. And what of her sperm donor I see and experience in her. (I'm sticking with the biologically 'determined' stuff here, for the sake of simplicity) I gotta tell you: it's not much. She seems/appears more of an independent creature than anything. It'll be interesting to watch, as she grows, if she shares personality traits or talents with either of us. But in all honesty, right now I witness Aurora in a form of mortal uniqueness. A specificity. I can't look away for very long or I miss yet another revelation. It's quite the magnificent experience, this 'seeing' her in/of her own self. Kinda like writing a sermon that keeps writing itself after you've put the pen/keys down. You can't believe you ever had that idea/piece/passion inside/to yourself now that it's out there breathing and maintaining on its own. Was the union just a dream? Did it ever belong to you? If so, in what way did it belong? How, now, shall it return to you or are you forever destined to be its creator now-somehow-apart? I think of G-d often this way. It's kinda tragic.
When I was in my final year of seminary I started thinking about the trinity as pregnancy. I even drew a diagram of the pregnant body in class and tried to explain how mother/baby/life-between-within fit perfectly with theologian Philip Clayton & Catherine Keller's ideas about panentheism: not God as all things, but God in and through and beyond all things. I realize today that what I got intellectually back then only makes spiritual sense in light of what I'm experiencing now. Just like my intellectual understandings of Jesus only make spiritual sense in light of pastoring now. What's making sense? Well, how we are each other and we're not each other at the same time. That goes for human co-journers (family, friends, mentors, colleagues, etc) and for the human/divine life. It's you in me and me in you and yet something totally Other--just like the prompt for this blog.
My absolute favorite times these days happen in the early morning. Aurora starts out by saying "hello" from her nursery, which we can hear over the baby monitor. I fill a bottle, make the coffee, tip toe into her room, pick her up, give her the bottle, change her diaper, then bring her into momma & daddy's bed. We spend the next 20-30 minutes just snuggling. Bare bodies. Sweet touches. Little laughter. It's a trinity all its own. This morning I felt especially grateful because J.R. was home with us after being gone for the weekend. (There is a womb like quality to the family bed: reunions after time away feel indescribably divine. Like, some skin that provides satiation to your own, which is your own and not your own at the same time, returns. I know you know this.) Anyways, I was basking in the glory of lover flesh combined with baby flesh, all rolling and romping around between the sheets and then Aurora started into this new routine where she kisses mommy "mwwaaaa" and then kisses daddy "mwwwaaaa" and then pushes our faces together so we kiss each other. She finds this quite amusing. I, on the other hand, store it away in that archive of my mind entitled "things I want to remember on my death bed" so that I go to heaven already knowing what heaven is. I said out-loud "how did we get so lucky?" J.R. responded by saying "she just gives back what we feed her." He's right. Absolutely. And, I know there will come a day when she gives even more than what she's been given. Isaiah too. I can only hope in those moments, they lift their precious faces to the shape-shifting sky, and blow the biggest mwaaaa's they've got to the One who is Creator/Redeemer/Sustainer, the "wor(l)d without end," amen.
