Still point of the turning world.

(This is excerpted from A Birth Memory from Shelley Abreu on Design Mom.)
Martin Luther said “If you could understand a single grain of wheat, you would die of wonder.” I thought of this quote yesterday, and it made me think about my first time giving birth. It was such a brutal and magnificent experience all in one. I pushed for four hours with Julia. I was in agony.


When she crowned, the pain felt like fire moving through me. I was not focused on the delivery room. I was outside of myself. Then, with the final push, she arrived. And that surge of energy that moved through me was holy. God was everywhere. There was all this commotion and raw earthy energy, but when she came out all the noise in my head stopped and all the pain in my body vanished and for a second I felt like I glimpsed inside “a single grain of wheat.”

I think this is what T.S. Eliot described as “the still point of the turning world,” the moment when you experience the kingdom of God within yourself. It’s the moment when you see that God is the universe, and the universe goes on forever, and it’s also bundled up inside of each of us.