Advent Day 9: December 10th
Giving Birth to Love

I imagine her hunched over on her donkey, soiled robes pulled tightly for warmth around her swollen body. The weariness of her long pilgrimmage is unspeakable. She rests one hand on her belly. Then the road becomes steep and her free hand grabs the rope lying across the burro's flanks. She steadies herself. She thinks, but I understand so little about love. How will I guide this soul? And in that silent moment she realizes that consenting to love, love in this form -- love in every form -- is the journey she will take.

She's very young but, like the rest of us, she will have to let go of any prior ideas about love: what it is, what it "should" feel like, where it might have taken her. she will have to let go of the securities that got her this far. This new love will turn everything around. Nothing she's learned previously will apply; no knowledge applies indefinitely. I can't lean on anything but God within. It's hardly a thought; it's a knowing. There is nothing else.

She considers the great mystery of life and the straining to give birth to a baby, but also to give birth to something hidden deep within. Two births, really: the birth of her child and the inner birth, the total surrender to God.

In some deep recess, we know her story isn't important at all unless we can live our own surrender. She is only pointing the way.


by Paula D'Arcy, Redbird Foundation
from the book: Daybreaks