Motherhood Quotes

“That you are not mine to possess, that you are not mine to craft and shape, that you are a gift to me, means that you can also be a divine presence to me. When you call to me in your need, that is God's call to me as well. The space I give you to grow and flourish becomes also the space for my own growth and flourishing.”
― Natalie Carnes, Motherhood: A Confession

“In fact, play is how humans have found their place in the world over millennia. Play is what gives birth to much of human culture: storytelling, meaning-making, art, ritual, and religion. Through play we learn to be human. Through play we learn to worship.”
― Natalie Carnes, Motherhood: A Confession

“You are so different from creation, in fact, that You transcend any difference with it. You are present to creation without being any less God by that presence. You are present to the lowest part of the earth, breathing it into life, without ceasing to be God. And You are always giving more of Yourself to creation, You who joined with creation in the incarnation, You who seek to draw all creation into Your Triune life. You are always and in all things seeking to realize the mystery of Your embodiment.”
― Natalie Carnes, Motherhood: A Confession

“Pope Benedict XVI wrote that liturgy should be "the rediscovering within us of true childhood, of openness to a greatness still to come, which is still unfulfilled in adult life." The child at play is an image for the kind of openness to life that adults should cultivate--that, in fact, the liturgy is trying to help people discover. In church I am seeking my true childhood.”
― Natalie Carnes, Motherhood: A Confession

“And Mary and the Church both, like You, labor for the world. Mary's labor figures, reveals, and clarifies the Church's own labor. The Church, like Mary labors to bear divine presence into the world. The Church, like Mary, participates in Your new creation and hearkens to Your first. In the figure of Mary, creation, church, and pregnancy all entwine as images of one another. A pregnant woman's body, the Church expectant, and You, the womb of creation, all come together in the image of pregnancy.”
― Natalie Carnes, Motherhood: A Confession

“As the human body is a microcosmos, the pregnant women's body is a microgenesis. Readings of Your incarnation in Mary's body often suggest this, even if they do not claim it outright. Mary's body is presented as a new creation. Mary's words "let it be done to me" (fiat mihi in the longtime language of the Church) echo Your words at creation "let there me light" (fiat lux). The Spirit hovering over the waters of the deep, formless and empty, hovers over the waters of Mary's womb, once again bringing life into a dark void.”
― Natalie Carnes, Motherhood: A Confession

“You are one of those mediations of God in my life. You bear God to me, make God present to me. Because you are an image of the Messiah to me, to address myself to you is, indirectly, to address myself to the divine, to the way that divine life is making its way in me, the way I am striving with divine powers, receiving wounding and blessing. To address you and my loving struggle to help you give birth to your own free will is also to address myself to the God in whose likeness I long to be reborn. God has come to me in you to draw me out of death.”
― Natalie Carnes, Motherhood: A Confession

“Our healing will not come in a divine grace that reunites us, bringing you back into my womb for us to live by one wholly integrated will. My grace is to wait, to love you through the detours your life takes, even if you travel far from me; to be present to you in hope and prayer; and to bring you near Love by reflecting love to you. I can help birth your will into freedom and goodness chiefly by being reborn into such freedom and goodness myself.”
― Natalie Carnes, Motherhood: A Confession

“If one movement of mercy is in hoping for its own diminishment, another must be toward its own expansion. The way of charity that the child calls us to--that you call me to--is a way that constantly magnifies, not because your needs multiply but because you call me to be open to the needs of others.”
― Natalie Carnes, Motherhood: A Confession