more about that Rowan Williams piece

What I like about this--what I struggle with--is the reassurance that there is no reassurance. That when we look for reassurance we are barking up the wrong tree (the wrong crucifix?), as it were. We crave reassurance, and there is a deep reassurance in that "promise of forgiveness and of a future." But not a reassurance that we are right, that we are righteous.

Motherhood has taught me more about spirituality than any other experience in my life. And what it teaches me every day is to lighten up, to accept uncertainty, to move forward in faith rather than fear. I've always been a pretty fearful person--afraid of failure, of danger, of physical pain. But motherhood is all about those things. Physical pain--ha! I laugh at it! (OK, not really, but after childbirth much else pales.) Danger--well, it's just there, isn't it. Life is dangerous, and after taking reasonable precautions you just move on or you'll find yourself shut up in the padded room wearing a crash helmet, and what's the fun in that? As for failure, that's the hardest. But I really do think we fail as parents almost every day, and our children forgive us.

I read a wonderful piece in Brain, Child some time ago--by Tracy Mayor, I'm pretty sure--called "Losing My Religion." In it she discusses her inability to embrace conventional religion, despite her earlier belief that that would just naturally arise along with parenthood. (I always thought I'd get a stocked bar when I became a parent, and I was wrong, too.) In the end, though, she embraces the image of Mary, the mother of Jesus, making meaning out of her son's death. A religion that makes meaning out of the loss of a child she can understand.

I can too, and I found her reflections poignant. But today I'm thinking a religion that makes meaning out of a child's forgiveness is a pretty radical religion, too, and it's one I'm more and more attracted to. We make mistakes, we receive forgiveness. We do our best, we fall short--and again, we are forgiven.