Mother Root © Jan L. Richardson
Over at my blog The Advent Door, I recently posted a reflection on Joseph, that remarkable and ordinary man who attended to his dreaming and chose to remain with Mary and with the child she would bear. So powerful was Joseph’s choice that both scripture and history merged Jesus’ bloodline with Joseph’s, tracing Jesus’ lineage through Joseph and his ancestors. Though we can be sure there were political and theological reasons for this, Joseph’s story offers us a striking invitation to consider our own choices and the power they hold. His story beckons us to pay attention to where God is calling us to place our solidarity, and what difference this can make in the world.
As I continue to reflect on Joseph, I find myself thinking, too, of the women who made Jesus’ story possible—those women whose stories have so often come to us in fragments, if at all. This is a reflection and prayer that I wrote some years ago as I pondered those women and the choices they made.
Mother Root
Some families remember the stories of Advent through keeping the tradition of the Jesse tree, a small tree decorated with ornaments that symbolize the ancestors of Christ. Although this wasn’t part of my tradition, somewhere along the way I became aware of the practice. I also learned that the symbols adorning the branches of the Jesse tree tend to represent the male ancestors of Christ more than his female ancestors, probably having to do with the fact that the stories and the lists of begats in the scriptures tell us much more about the men than the women. The women were there, however, a significant but often hidden stream surfacing occasionally in stories and in places such as the genealogy which opens Matthew’s Gospel. Rahab, Tamar, Ruth, Bathsheba, and Mary, the writer reminds us: their blood, too, ran in Jesus’ veins.
Thinking of them, I began to imagine another tree, one that grows in a hidden grove, tended by those who know the place. The tree has been nourished by the blood of birthing and by the tears of women who struggled for life. The fires meant to destroy it have thickened its trunk and opened its seeds, which the Spirit has spread to the four corners of the earth. Holding the moon in its arms and the sun in its branches, the tree is witness to the cycles of seasons and the turning of years. I am rooted here, drawing on the stretch of generations, listening to the whispered stories in the rustling of leaves. Here all the unremembered, unrecorded names have been traced into the bark. Here the tree grows strong, nourished at the mother root.
Spirit of earth,
take root in me;
strength of fire,
enliven me;
power of wind,
blow through me;
blessing of rain,
fall on me.
Wisdom of blood,
flow through me;
promise of seed,
unfold in me;
endurance of story,
speak through me;
spiral of time,
remember me.
“Mother Root” reflection and prayer from In Wisdom’s Path: Discovering the Sacred in Every Season © Jan L. Richardson, 2000.
Usually when the liturgy comes to Jesus’ genealogy, I make a point of posting his genealogy through the women. I did not this year, as I was running out of time. What I like about your poem, one point out of several, is that it has the rhythm of Anima Christi… It thus makes a beautiful counterpart or companion to the other prayer. Thank you.