Geography Incarnate

Robert Farrar Capon--Episcopal priest and father of six--says in Bed and Board: Plain Talk About Marriage:

To be a Mother is to be the sacrament--the effective symbol--of place. Mothers do not make homes, they are our home: in the simple sense that we begin our days by a long sojourn within the body of a woman; in the extended sense that she remains our center of gravity throughout the years. She is the very diagram of belonging, the where in whose vicinity we are fed and watered, and have our wounds bound up and our noses wiped. She is geography incarnate.

....The mother is the geographical center of her family, the body out of whom their diversity springs, the neighborhood in which that diversity begins ever so awkwardly to dance its way back to the true Body which is the Mother of us all. Her role then is precisely to be there for them. Not necessarily over there, but there--thereness itself, if you will; not necessarily in her place but place itself to them; not necessarily at home but home itself.

.... remember, you are a landmark.... You are and remain the bodily link with our origin. You are the oldest thing in the world; don't be in a hurry to forget any of your history....

You are not only a link with something. You are the thing itself; and you are the sacrament, the instrument, by which we learn to love the things that are. Your body is the first object any child of man ever wanted. Therefore dispose yourself to be loved, to be wanted, to be available. Be there for them with a vengeance. Be a gracious, bending woman. Incline your ear, your heart, your hands to them.