ABSTRACT
In paintings of the crucifixion, often the wound on the side of Christ’s belly looks like a womb. I imagine all the souls that were given birth via that womb, and how the people crowding the cross’s base may have caught those souls. The apostolic succession, Christ to Peter, Peter to the Popes, has a populist mirror here. All began there for the people of God. I am of the body of Christ. I am in the people of God. When the Holy Spirit came down like a dove, I was there, and when Christ died, that wound leaking water like amniotic fluid, I was there. Being part of a corpus means that all of Christ is in me as well as all of his children. Like all nature, it is cyclical. The moon waxes and wanes; the tides rise and recede; people are born and die, and Christ is in the middle of that circle. She gives birth to the placenta of new life, her breasts suckling, nurturing, and loving us.
