The mystery of the three persons of our One God is conceivable in love. Love is impossible in solitude. Love must include others. As mothers, we understand this love that creates, shares and adores. That bears life. That births newness. This is mother-love, an idea that the Hebrew Bible uses to describe our Creator, who wants a family that enjoys each other forever.

I struggle to write this because of what I do not know. I do not know SO MUCH. And what if I write wrongly?  And yet I cannot GO wrong with Love. And love is where this story starts. And love is what a mother knows. Not because she is a great scholar. Not because she is more worthy. But because that is what she IS. A mother IS love.

In Hebrew, the word translated compassion or tender mercy is racham. And do you know what other meaning that word has- in fact its first literal meaning? Womb. That lump of tissue only women who conceive utilize and KNOW. The womb. Mother love. Compassion. Forgiving, merciful, tenacious, overlooking, self-denying, unfailing, eternal love.

And God is rachum – compassionate. A feeling founded in the womb.

God is the ultimate womb that birthed the cosmos. He knows about mother-love.

Here the story starts. With God as love. And here our connection as moms begins. For love is not singular. It is not solitary. It is not alone. It is not an island. Love conceives ideas and dreams and it grows to include a family to adore. Mother love – that creates and adores. That bears life. That births newness. That nourishes and feeds innocence. It protects. It fights tooth and nail. It does whatever is necessary for the little ones it formed, and fed and nested for. For the babes she pushed out in agony or had cut from her very flesh as independent lives – living souls formed from her cells; shared her blood, fed on her flesh. Love must include others.

This is racham – womb –mother love.

This is a hint of who our God, who is neither he nor she – is. The “I am.” The mother of all the living souls in the universe. Who wanted a family.

And I sit before this magnificent love and am afraid I’ll get it wrong, or you’ll misunderstand and think God is not what  is. Because God IS everything you dreamed of and more. I don’t even know what more.

That is the mystery that we will start with.

Read Part 2.