Hi friends,
I hope that your May was a good one – mine was! It was mostly spent settling into a routine with our new puppy, Hildegard. As someone who loves it when things stay the same, any routine shakeup, even one that happens for good reasons, is a little stressful for me, but we have something approaching a new normal and I’m feeling more relaxed now than I did a few weeks ago.
In book news, I got my advance reader copies a few weeks ago. What a wild experience to hold the actual, physical book in my hands. We’re gearing up for publicity and marketing for the book, so I think it’ll be a busy summer. And of course I’ll keep the internet updated on any in-person or virtual events happening related to the book. <3
“To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must give it to no one, not even an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements. Lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket, safe, dark, motionless, airless, it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable.” - C.S. Lewis
Mother’s Day was the other weekend, and I spent some time thinking about which tarot cards I associate with my experience of motherhood. The Empress is the archetype most traditionally associated with mothers: fertile, creative, abundant, and, in some decks at least, literally depicting a pregnant woman. But the Empress is not what I thought of; what came to mind for me was the Four of Swords. For me, the Four of Swords represents a surrender of self so deep it almost feels like death. In The Contemplative Tarot, I wrote about how loving the way Christ instructs us to love requires us to let go of our desires to control every aspect of our lives. The work of open-hearted love demands that we release expectations on a scale both small and large, from whether or not we accomplish everything on our to-do list in a day to what the long journey of an entire life looks like. And for me, nothing helps me enter that posture of surrender quite like mothering my children. If I let my basest self have her way, I would never expose myself to any vulnerability at all. My heart would be wrapped up carefully and no one would come close enough to break it. The worst part of me would rather play it safe, but I love my children, and so I let my love for them and their love for me mess up my life and crack my heart wide open again and again.
I think it’s important to note that the Four of Swords is not necessarily an archetype that people associate with good feelings. The Rider-Waite tarot shows us an actual tomb; it depicts a little death. But in writing about how motherhood aids my spiritual life inasmuch as it pushes me to constant surrender of control, I’m always reminding myself that the aim of the spiritual life is not to make one feel good. The aim is to become a saint, and nothing brings me closer to sanctification than motherhood. Sometimes, after a particularly difficult day of mothering, I think about the story of Jacob in Genesis when, after Jacob has a prophetic dream of a stairway to heaven, he wakes up and says, “Surely the Lord is in this place and I did not know it!” Even in the difficult days of mothering (maybe particularly in those days), the Lord is present with me. Nothing makes me more Christ-like than the seemingly endless giving of motherhood that pulls me out of my own selfish desires. Nothing makes me more holy than letting my life be wholly ruined by love.
I’m always trying to figure out how to talk here about the ways motherhood informs my life while also respecting the privacy of my children. But pregnancy is a thing that affects me as much as it affects the little person I’m growing, and I will at least allow the internet to know how many children I have, even if I don’t divulge names or photos. I used to have two children and now I have three. I’m almost twenty weeks pregnant right now with a sweet little girl, about halfway through what is, so far, a deliciously easy pregnancy. The baby is due towards the end of October, about six weeks after my book is published, so it’ll be a very fruitful fall.
When I announced this pregnancy to friends and family earlier this spring, I had a handful of people ask me if I got pregnant on purpose or if it was an accident. It’s a very personal question, but I understand the curiosity. My first two children are a mere sixteen months apart, and this little one will be coming along almost exactly eight years later. Also, after my first two children were born I told anyone who would listen that I was never going to have more children (love to eat my words! such a humbling experience!). The truth is, I didn’t have any more children for a long time because I wasn’t sure I could be a good mother to more than two children. But really, I continued to not have any more children because I was scared of opening myself up to the vulnerability of loving another new person. My husband and I both (my husband more than me, to his credit) felt for quite some time like something was missing from our family, that children are a joy and more children equals more joy. But also, I like control. I like for things to stay the same. I like a clean house and a well-ordered life and a solid routine. Children upend all of that. They do it constantly. Two children is what I feel like I can handle by myself. More than two children is what I feel like I can handle with God’s help. If I really believe that the Lord is in this place of mothering, then I should live like I actually believe it. Accepting help, even from God, is a difficult thing for me to do, but here I am doing it, living in the little ego-death of the Four of Swords and feeling proud of myself. It’s the deepest surrender of my life.
What’s been most surprising to me is that, so far, it’s actually felt really good. One of my favorite things about the pregnancy and postpartum period is that I temporarily lose my mind. I literally lose, to a shocking extent, my capacity for critical thinking. Other women experience this too – I haven’t found extensive writing on it but I treasure these two essays by Ellen Koneck and Amy Bornman. When this happened with my first two children it terrified me because at the time I had never heard any other mother talk about this specific experience and so I wasn’t sure that my mind would ever come back. I genuinely remember thinking at some point after my second son was born, Oh I guess I’m just a dumb animal now. My mind did come back though. More importantly, it came back better: more creative, more eager to make connections among ideas, more independent and more courageous and more gentle. I already feel myself sinking into that mindless animality again. I’m writing this portion of the essay while sitting on my back porch with a sleeping puppy next to me, and every word feels dragged out of me because I’d rather be watching the squirrels chase each other through the trees and feeling my daughter practice somersaults in my uterus. But after having just written a book, it feels good to surrender to a fallow period. I actually became pregnant again in part specifically because I want to write more books (how’s that for a contradiction), and the deliberate fallowness of the pregnancy and nursing phases is so good for my creative life. As Louise Erdrich points out in her memoir The Blue Jay’s Dance, “It requires no thought at all for me to form and fix a whole other person.” The sort of magical thoughtlessness of it feels so good – no thoughts, just babies – and I’m looking forward to seeing what happens to my mind during this new period of rest.
So for all the talk of motherhood’s surrender and the Four of Swords, I guess there is a little Empress in the experience after all. It is magical to be able to “form and fix a whole other person.” One of my most treasured spiritual beliefs is the idea that every person who exists in the world is an absolute bonafide miracle, that the gravest sin is to deny the dignity of a human person. As Thomas Merton wrote, we are all “walking around shining like the sun.” There is nothing more beautiful than a person, and I get to make people. I get to participate with God in the making of miracles. For a long time my fertility felt like a burden, a thing that needed to be fixed and controlled, suppressed until convenient for me. In the last year or so I’ve come to feel differently about it. Now it feels more like an integral part of my everyday life and my spiritual life and my creative life, a thing I can work with instead of constantly trying to stifle. And truly, what is more creative than that surrender? What is more creative than allowing oneself to be shaped and sanctified by all the varieties of love?
To Fall on the Sword of Love
Thank you for this unique interpretation of the four of swords! As a mother and grandmother I understand I appreciate what you are saying. I also know that most of my tension, fear, and anxiety relates to these precious relationships. Also judgment. Ugh. The card invites me to unclench, rest, and practice nonattachment. That it is situated in a cathedral offers perspective, strength, hope, and joy.