The eyes of all look to you, and you give them their food in due season; you open your hand, satisfying the desire of every living thing. (Psalm 145:15-16)
When I drop my daughter at the stables, I look across the wetlands to the dunes. Between the weathered, flattened dunes are two perky dunes side by side. For all the world, they look like a young woman’s breasts. I prayer-dream a woman lying across the landscape. Her hair streams like kelp into the sea; her breasts rise among the dunes; her womb encompasses the fertility of the wetlands.
I remember Biblical passages where God is compared to a womb, a mother, and the giver of all good things in due season. I think of how the wetlands provide an abundance of food in each season: fish, frog, bird, snake, shrimp, reed. I remember that this land – earth, sea and sky – has been feeding people with generous hand for tens of thousands of years. I remember that I am formed from the earth, and I live only because of the earth’s continual nourishment. I am brain, muscle, sinew, fat, fed by egg, berry, salt, kelp: I am formed and fed by the land. We are all connected, and I praise God, source of all life, mother and nourisher of us all.
Perhaps next time you do the Warrnambool-Port Fairy ride, you’ll pause at the top of the bike path at Mahogany Farm and notice those little twin dunes. You’ll smile, perhaps, at the vision of a woman lying in the landscape; but perhaps you’ll also remember God’s maternal presence and generous hand. Maybe you’ll also wonder, with me, how this generosity might be nurtured, protected and shared. Ω
Alison and the whale 