The Gift.

Today I came close to experiencing divinity. I held a month-old baby girl in my arms, awestruck by the weightlessness of the breathing, gurgling, sleeping, miraculous bundle of life. How do you fit a soul into such a tiny body? If life can't be measured in volume, weight, and quantity, then what else can it be but miraculousness? I think I had a small glimpse of the potentiality of motherhood for myself, considering that perhaps one day, my body will hold that life within itself and set it into the world. I can't describe the peace and the gratitude that poured into my heart at the moment that she was placed in my arms, the absolute thankfulness for my life, for the lives of those who I love, for the concept of life itself, the miracle and wonder if it.

It's hard to be enmeshed in sadness and depression, to obsess over misery and distress, when there is the promise of young life in your grasp, all the trust and vulnerability in the world--all 7 pounds of it--nuzzling into your chest, head nestled in the crook of your arm. To kiss the soft and ruddy cheek of an infant is the most beautiful delight, to have a tiny hand clasped around your finger, perplexed by the sheer miniscule nature of this hand, so like your own and yet so unlike, makes all the worries of the world melt away into meaninglessness.

That's the thing. I encounter so much death, hear so much of it, on the news, in the lives of others, I see the grief of death, the senselessness of it, the finality of it. But how often do we celebrate the promise of new life? The sprouting of a tiny tree up from the ground? The beginnings, the open, terrifying, vulnerable, raw, lovely, powerful, awe-inspiring, quiet, delightful, peaceful love of life itself?

O sweet little infant in my arms today, you gave me something no one could give me with their words or prescriptions. With your gurgles and cries, you conveyed to me the essence of life itself.