Compassion and the Womb: It's Complicated

I first fell in love with the Hebrew language because it is so image-driven. You don't just get angry, your two nostrils redden; you're not just a male, you are one who pees against a wall. Reading the Hebrew Bible is like a treasure hunt, with new imagery jumping off the page in each passage. I have long found it thought-provoking and moving that the Hebrew word for compassion is a close relative to the Hebrew word for womb. For me this imagery puts skin on a number of facets of compassion. Compassion means responsiveness, a capacity to hold space for the full range of human experience, a commitment to cultivate a soft heart in fierce ways, a recognition that I am because you are and vice versa.

Many people have pointed out how the very first in a famous list of divine attributes found in Exodus 34:6 is compassion. God is a god of compassion. God gives birth to the people and is likened to a nursing mother who cannot forget her suckling child. These examples can be thought of as evidence of how the everyday lived experience of mothers is a place where God becomes incarnate, how

One of the reasons I find the analogy of mother, or primary caregiver, to be a compelling analogy for thinking about divine presence in human life is because of what I have learned about attachment relationships unfold in human life. In attachment theory, one of the many fascinating things scholars point out is the way mothers can serve as both a safe-haven and a launching pad. In secure, healthy attachment relationships, a child finds refuge and comfort in their mother's presence and also finds there the strength and courage to go forth and explore and take risks. These two facets of the attachment relationship are deeply intertwined. And they play out in a variety of ways, manifesting differently at different points in human development or in different seasons of life.

When I teach classes on the topic of compassion, I find it helpful to note both of these phenomena and also to point out how our becoming, our sense of separate selfhood and identity, is facilitated by the safe haven. It's almost like the availability of a refuge alone is not enough. We need our primary caregiver to have the capacity to support our exploration and creativity and making our own decisions. This freedom to be and become, along with a solid sense of belonging, is key to human thriving.

Going back to the recurring motif in the Hebrew Bible: God is a God of the womb, what do we make the complex ways this analogy shows up in scripture? In the opening stories of the Bible, God opens wombs and closes wombs. Women are caught up in plays for power, and use a great variety of creative means to outwit whatever situations or people they are up against. They sometimes seem like victims in a rigged system. And other times they are the heroes in narrative threads that preceded them and continue long after their deaths. Many times, there are multiple ways to read the same story. And there are almost always many, many facets to a mother's story, and to the story of a mother and child.

As a mother myself, and a woman acquainted with women in many complex and multi-faceted situations, I am simultaneously troubled and comforted as I engage with these stories and reflect on the womb and the many aspects of motherhood as a window into the presence of the divine. If compassion is only and always a response to suffering, perhaps there is no better window into the complexity of how this responsiveness plays out than the enduring yet ever-renegotiated relationships that begin in the womb and continue through the twists and turns of life's unfolding journey.