A couple of days ago, I told my husband "I know I don't deserve you, and that's ok. It doesn't give me anxiety, or a constant fear of having to deserve you. I just rest in your love."
He jokingly repeated what the priest had mentioned during the Sunday homily, saying "You're abiding."
I laughed and said "yes, I guess I'm abiding" and thought nothing of it.
The next day, while having 10 minutes for myself, I started thinking about that word. "Abiding". What does it mean for a wife to abide in her husband's presence? Well, what does it mean for the Christian soul to abide in her Divine Spouse?
Especially when the soul is aware of the inequality of worth. How does the mortal abide in the divine, without fear? The love of God is best translated through the love of fellow humans. We experience it mostly through those relationships. So what did it mean for me to abide in the love, and MERCY, of a husband I find far better than I am as a person?
Let's step a minute away from this topic.
A few weeks ago, I told my husband: "I find it interesting that the celibate mystics, often unwed monastics, always seem to understand the Eucharist as a marriage, a union of two souls, even sometimes as a higher representation of the physical intimacy within a marriage. As an unwed woman, I used to see the Eucharist exactly as such: a marriage. Now that I am married and a mother, I see it rather as a motherly relationship. God, who is far more (infinitely) capable and independent, gives His Body fully for the life of a little feeble weak and incapable soul. He feeds us, literally, of his body, like a mother does to a child."
Anyone who has ever been within the orbit of a pregnant woman understands the immense gentleness, but above all the MERCY, that is required from her towards that helpless being within her womb. Those who have followed Melkite Musings for a while already know how much I love the linguistic connection between Mercy and Womb. In Arabic, which is the primary language of most Melkites around the world and the liturgical language of our Church (besides Greek), Rahem and Rahma mean Womb and Mercy, respectively. To hold someone in your womb is to hold them in your mercy, and to hold them in your mercy is to hold them like a mother in your womb.
Anyone who has every been in the orbit of a good mother also knows that a womb is supposed to be a safe space, where the child exists without anxiety or an attempt at "deserving" the mercy being received. That love and gentleness begins and ends with the mother's capacity to love, not with anything the child ever does, especially before being born.
In other words, the child "abides in the mercy and the womb."
This is exactly how we abide in God. He feeds us His Body, for no reason besides His own love, which begins and ends in Him, the infinite.
We, too, need to learn to abide in Him with the trust of a helpless and well-loved child. We are completely dependent on His mercy, and that is the greatest surety we could ever receive. There is no anxiety, no scrupulosity, no fear, no doubt, in that abiding. There is only the unfathomable depth of our unworthiness, resting in the free mercy and safe womb of the unfathomable depth of God's love.
I conclude with this piece of a larger poem I've been working on for years. It is 62 pages long, but this part is only a few verses. It speaks of a time I was sitting in my room in Lebanon, before my Icon Corner, while it was raining outside. It was one of the first times I experienced God's love as one of peace rather than scrupulous fear and military-like obedience of divine rules.
The feeling? Being in a womb, floating out of awareness of anything besides the secure walls of my location and the soothing sound of water (rain) surrounding me.
"Hearken, child of Light
To the Spirit’s refrain
Distant thunder’s might
And soothing winter rain.
The voice of the Father’s heart
Ever in gentle whisper calling
To forfeit the cheating pull to depart
Beyond the edges of the morning
Into the mind’s darkened tomb
Of doubt and tired senescence.
For not a cage, but a mother’s womb
Are the walls of Faith's fence."
If I were to give this section a specific title, perhaps it would be: "Abiding".
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