OK, I’ll admit it: friends laugh at me for waxing poetical about things biological, but I can’t help it! Read Chapter 3 in Souls at Work for more on my fascination with the microscopic child and his movement toward the mother – his first ‘act’! Did you realize the placenta is made of the first cells of the baby himself??

This poem is about any old kid – wonder that he is – and about The Child, Jesus and His Blessed Mother’s own yearning for Him that is every mother’s call to her unborn child: “Come, Come!” In this poem is her YES to God and Christ’s YES to her desire for Him.
Blessed Angela of Foligno had a vision of Christ saying to her, “Make yourself a capacity, so I may be a torrent.” This image so resonates with me that you’ll see it in many places in my work. (Really? You haven’t read everything I’ve ever written??)

It seems to me that God uses all the yearning-for-what-is-not-yet to bring about His response, His giving of that very thing. To me, the blastocyst teaches us we must first yearn, move toward what we must have for life, act. Then God supplies all that is lacking in our little being, and makes the huge, nourishing network of His economy of grace accessible to us, no matter how little able we are to receive it all.

Please also note that the world is trying to re-define the moment pregnancy begins as ‘implantation’ which occurs several days after a real child is conceived and begins to grow!!!!

Blastocyst

 

Once upon a time

in a deep, quiet darkness

two forms pierced one another,

becoming One.

This One pulsed with light,

and danced,

and grew…

once, twice and again –

double, double, double.

Eight mirrored chambers,

then, as one, the seven veils drew back.

Single and still, the One remained, an “I”.

A pause, a holy hush, an agony of yearning

while the empty vessel listened

for an answering cry:

“Come to me, beloved, come,”

“Seek me that I may be found!”

Love called and love responded,

“Yes.”

Merest capacity moved toward

the corresponding torrent

and was filled.