Buddhist Catholic Contemplative Evangelical General Christian Hindu Jewish Latter-day Saint Muslim New Visions Progressive Christian

Beliefs

Topics

Columnists

Resource Library

Research Tools

Video

Podcasts

Thought Readers

Faith In Media Tracker

Newsletters

Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In Subscription Support

Follow Patheos

spiritchatter

Home
Progressive Christian
Prodigal Blood: a response to Sheridan Voysey’s Resurrection Year

Prodigal Blood: a response to Sheridan Voysey’s Resurrection Year

Last updated on: July 18, 2013 at 12:27 pm by Jack Levison

Prodigal Blood: a response to Sheridan Voysey’s Resurrection Year 2013-07-18T12:27:43-07:00 Jack Levison

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

A post by Priscilla Pope-Levison

The day before I started to bleed I turned 30. Jack and I celebrated my birthday and a baby on the way underneath a crystal chandelier in the dining room of our 1920s home. So many corners of the house needed work, like most of the homes on the once posh street in Kansas City, but we had fallen in love with its delft-tiled fireplace, crisscross wooden beams, and real crystal chandelier. We planned to restore the house to its original glory, starting with the second bedroom—the baby’s room.

I felt exuberant and hopeful, poised to finish my doctoral dissertation in theology, deeply in love with the man I’d married seven years earlier, and now—icing on the cake—expecting a baby. The very next morning, I started to bleed.

The doctor confirmed it: I was going to miscarry. But it wouldn’t happen right away, he said, so he “packed me tight” with gauze to catch any prodigal blood and sent me home to wait. I didn’t have to wait long. That night, a few hours later, I went into labor. I did my best to distract myself from the aching by knitting a vest I’ve only worn a few times since then, but the pain became unbearable. So Jack and I got in the car and made a midnight ride to the hospital—an unforgettable, bittersweet night he wrote about in his first Patheos blog, “Welcome, Black and Blue Saints.”

The miscarriages didn’t stop. There were two more after the first, each accompanied by overwhelming grief and loss, each more final than the one before. After the second miscarriage, the doctor ordered a light battery of tests, but nothing alarming showed up. After the third, the tests ramped up, and they found a chromosomal translocation in my genes.

Sometime between the first and second miscarriage, we moved to Chicago for jobs at another university and started the rounds of church visiting, an already dismal experience of putting yourself out there, of being a stranger among people who knew each other and talked to anyone but you*.*

In one of those churches, on Mother’s Day, 1990, the pastor invited mothers to come to the altar area to join in a celebration dance together. Just mothers. Not women who mother others’ children – like teachers, nurses, day care workers – or single-parent fathers who mother, or even those who hope to be mothers one day. I could not link arms with them. They formed a circle of exclusion.

In Resurrection Year, author Sheridan Voysey nails it on the head when he writes, “childlessness can bring isolation.”

Like chronic illness, unwanted singleness, and other life statuses that deviate

from the ‘norm,’ childlessness can bring isolation. … Merryn [his wife] stopped

attending baby showers and still skips church on Mother’s Day. (169)

Voysey rightly questions – critiques – this truncated, narrow view of family by considering what Jesus, who also didn’t have his own biological children, has to say about family.

… you [Jesus] widened the boundaries of what we call a family.

Whoever does God’s will—a family not of bloodline but of faith.

No biological children for you, but many spiritual ‘descendants.’ (174)

Noted culture critic Rodney Clapp claims that Jesus “decenters” the nuclear family by answering the question, “Who are my mother and my brothers?” in Mark 3:33-34 with this statement: “Here are my mother and my brothers! Whoever does the will of God.”

It is this family network that demands our first allegiance over and above the nuclear family. Clapp calls this family the First Family: the church, the world-wide, kingdom-building community. The Second Family is a biological family. For Christians—married, partnered, divorced, single, with biological or adopted children, or with no children at all—the First Family comes first.

At the end of C. S. Lewis’ The Great Divorce, Voysey recalls, a “radiant lady is honored in heaven with a procession of singing girls and boys.” Are these her biological or adoptive children? “No,” the guide explains, “she didn’t have a large family, but because she loved well on earth, every young man or boy that met her became her ‘son’ in heaven … and every girl she met became her ‘daughter.'” (192)

She didn’t have a large family. She had a First Family, bursting “with a procession of singing girls and boys.”

miscarriage; resurrection; silence; in vitro fertilization; adoption; Oxford; Australia; radio broadcast; prophecy; Job; Bible; Christianity; L'Abri

mother

Mother's Day

Previous Post

July 11, 2013

Stumbling Upon Silence: Our reflections on Sheridan Voysey's Resurrection Year

Next Post

July 23, 2013 Daily Bread at a Weekly Food Bank

Browse Our Archives

Select a Category Uncategorized

Select a Month August 2017 July 2017 June 2017 March 2017 February 2017 February 2016 December 2015 September 2015 August 2015 June 2015 May 2015 February 2015 January 2015 December 2014 November 2014 October 2014 September 2014 August 2014 July 2014 June 2014 May 2014 April 2014 March 2014 February 2014 January 2014 December 2013 November 2013 October 2013 September 2013 August 2013 July 2013 June 2013 May 2013

TAKE THE

Religious Wisdom Quiz

Who was Jacob's favorite son?

Select your answer to see how you score.

Judah Levi Dan Joseph