"She Shall be Saved in Childbearing."

The water swirled warmly around me as I reclined against the corner of the hot tub, my eyes floating softly shut as I rested in a meditative state.

That's when I became aware.

I became aware of their faces, resting lovingly upon me. The faces of those I loved.

My friends.

What was this moment?

Resting in this hot tub, being held in the love of those whom I love... this was a birth. A home birth, a water birth.

But the birth of what? The birth of an infant?

Yes, the birth of an infant.

And that infant—was me.

Yet, it was not the old me, the first me. No, that tiny baby was the new me. The me that came from me. The new "me" fashioned from and nurtured by the deepest place within myself, and yet was something altogether different.

The new creation, born not into flesh, but into awareness.

He said he felt it too.

The next day, he was meditating. My best friend. We hadn't spoken to each other of this experience, and yet he felt this same awareness.

Giving birth, to himself.

"Ruach Hakodesh" (רוּחַ הַקֹּדֶשׁ)

The Divine Spirit.

Once, she was feminine, in the Hebrew.

"She" became gender-neutral when she moved into the Greek.

And alas, "She" was mutated into the masculine when She became Latin.

We have lost the Divine Feminine. And at what inestimable cost to our spiritual flourishing.

The Spirit of God.

The womb. To be cared for, nurtured--

Created, re-created.

There's this thing about the feminine. Within us, we women contain the fertile soil from which all life, all life that ever has been or ever will be--the soil from which all life springs.

And within ourselves, we nurture.

What is "the feminine"? Some of us outwardly manifest our femininity. Others manifest the masculine. Yet within us, we each contain the essence of both the feminine and the masculine. Both raw strength, and profound recreation.

What would it feel like--to relax--into the place where we nurture our own selves?

Where we are born into our becoming?

And what would it feel like, to open our hearts, the fertile soil of our love, for the birth of another?