I Said to my Mother

I said to my mother, “Be still, and tell me of my body.”

And she replied saying, “My child, it is from my love for your father that you have sprung. Your limbs are my pride in his strength. Your eyes are my longing always to see and rejoice in him. While your hands are his hands that have held me and lifted me to him; that have built for me and prepared the place of my motherhood.

But oh, my son, your face is the moon and stars. It is my soul made flesh. It is not my face. Neither is it the face of your father. Rather it is the face of all that mystery that has been in the love between us.

Your body, my son, is the cup of my being that I have held longingly to my unseen husband. For child, I am the wife of God, mother of all living. I am your body.”

Wondering at this I spoke to the presence of my father that was all about me and within, saying, “Father, tell me of my spirit.” And straightaway there arose in me a great understanding opening myself to its Self. “I am the sunlight upon the earth. I am the lightning reaching across the storm. I am the continual silence amidst your constant activity. For it is I that have filled your mother’s body that is your own, and I exist therein as yourself. Yet I am not you, or you I. For I am the unseen, and felt, that brings feeling and form to your mother.

But above all, my son, think of me as the mystery ever to remain.”

Thus spoke my parents. Thus heard their son. And the joy that was mine upon hearing, I held out to them, knowing it was their joy, not my own. In this way was it with me through all time.

Copyright © 1969 Tony Crisp