Returning Home
Greece recap + the joy of bearing the image of God as a woman
“You’re really brave,” she said midway through our weeklong retreat. I’d only known this woman a few days, but she sparkled. As the oldest in the group, she brought decades of wisdom and I adored her. But I sensed her comment was not just flattery.
“This is deep, heavy stuff. Not many choose to go here,” she reminded me with wide eyes and a slow nod of her head.
I gulped. She was right. Who were we to think we could invite ten women to Greece for a retreat focused on the mother heart of God and dare to touch the deepest, rawest mother wounds within each of us? Who were we to ask these women to do some of the most vulnerable things imaginable – to trust other women, to rest, to play?
It’s been two months since my dear friend Melissa Reed and I led our fifth (!) retreat at our home away from home in Greece and I catch my mind wandering again and again back to that week. To the long table we laughed, cried, prayed, and feasted around. To the deck under the pine trees where we did yoga in our gloriously changing postpartum and menopausal bodies. To the sea where we plunged into the salty water and felt ourselves reborn. To the deck under the stars as we danced and danced and danced. To the town where we shopped with the ferociousness of mothers who have not shopped without children in forever. To the feeling of a sister’s squeeze and a mother’s embrace.
I remembered when I was with them, that this is what it feels like to be seen, known, and loved by a God whose image women and mothers uniquely bear. I remember, even know, how God’s invitation to us, as the hands and feet of Christ, is to lay the table and invite others to the feast.
God is the one who nourishes, abundantly, deliciously, again and again, just like a mother.
We walked through some hard and heavy stuff together that week and I marvel still at the bravery of these women to follow the Spirit’s lead into the most tender of places. To sit in a circle with them was precious, holy ground.
Oh, what a joy it is to bear the image of God as a woman.
I’m grateful to you, dear reader, for your grace in my absence here the last couple of months. After a week of retreat-leading, my family and some friends flew out to Greece and we spent a week playing at the villa. And then we went to England for a few days. And then we came home and two weeks later I was off to Michigan for a week of in-person classes for my M.Div. program at Western Theological Seminary. This last weekend was my daughter’s birthday and Halloween and yes, I’m ready to curl up in bed and hibernate until Spring.
If motherhood has awakened me to anything, it’s my limits. Starting in ohhh about February I started worrying about *all this* and had mentally blocked off September and October for anything other than survival. Like most of my hypervigilant futurecasting, things turned out way more fun and wonderful than I imagined they would be, and also, more exhausting than a brain is capable of conjuring.
Seasons of big travel like this make me fantasize about the days when humans traveled by ship. Yes, I’m sure it was nauseating for many reasons, but to have weeks to transition between places feels luxurious. I’m not sure a human is meant to go from Greece to Seattle in 10 hours, picking right back up where they left off as if they hadn’t just experienced something so wildly different. Anyway, I think my body, brain, heart, and spirit have finally caught up with each other and I’m sensing my creative energy returning.
I have some new pieces, conversations, and art to share with you in the coming weeks. But for now, I leave you with this blessing that grounded us all week in Greece:
Psalm to the Three-in-One
by Carla A. Grosch-Miller
Blessed are You, O Holy One,
who crowns the earth with beauty,
who brings forth the greening
and blesses the dying,
who summons the songs of the beloved.
Blessed are You.
Blessed are You, O Holy One,
who absorbs the pain of the world,
who cradles broken bodies and sorrowful spirits,
who loves us back to life.
Blessed are You.
Blessed are You, O Holy One,
who waits in silence,
who holds the seeds of new life,
who keeps counsel with the wind.
Blessed are You.
Blessed are You, Three-in-One and One-in-Three,
whose love holds the universe together
and binds the human family to dust and stars.
Blessed are You.