Making Heaven
Submitted by Sharon Wesolowski on Wed, July 8th 2009.
Category: Joyful mothering moment
Each year on Mother’s Day, nature permitting, I often elect to take a family bike ride. On this year’s adventure a new catch-phrase was born through my youngest son, shifting the way I see and experience things. Each family knows the power of these little phrases… ditties that emerge out of nowhere to transport an ordinary moment into an extraordinary one.
On this particular ride as our family cycled through a sun-filled Sunday of bird calls, bursting greenery, and an abundance of people milling about trailways, my youngest son called to me from his tandem seat, “This is making heaven.” I slowed our pace as my heart digested this simple phrase, and we continued pedaling in parent-child rhythm.
A while later our family pulled over to the side of the trail to rest, and my son jumped off his tag-along to sit beside me in the grass. He proclaimed, “Let’s make heaven again.” He explained this means I was to hold, squish and snuggle him. My mind began to traverse inner pathways of wonder, attempting to discern where he came up with this phrase since our family rarely used the term “heaven” at home. His purity of insistence for physical contact brought me out of the realm of my thoughts, into the joy of being in this moment now known to us as Heaven. We sat in presence, my whole system receiving the nourishment of this child’s wisdom.
As days have unfurled since that bike ride, this phrase has appeared several times in the course of our daily rhythm… at predictable moments and edged into unexpected ones. Each night my son now exclaims, “It’s time to make heaven” which refers to our nightly ritual of snuggling and holding him as he drifts to sleep. My son uses the phrase whenever he feels the need for close loving contact, and I’ve become aware how just saying it ushers in a deep sense of practical peace. Indeed, heaven is in our hands, and we are always capable of seeing it, and thus creating it, here and now. The sweet gift my son gave me this Mother’s Day is welcoming heaven as our living moment-to-moment reality.
Hea-ven: n. A condition or place of supreme happiness (The American Heritage Dictionary).
I’ve since connected this phrase of ‘making heaven’ with other family slogans we often use, such as, ‘I love you even when you get upset,’ or ‘I’m always with you even when we’re apart.’ Heaven is each of these moments… in the togetherness and aloneness, in the challenges and highlights of our day… in the longing and search for peace and order… and in the willingness to receive the wonder of life, even in our myriad confusion, right now. This invitation and risk to be… with my nonsense of self, with these children, my husband, each person, plant and creature, in this moment, as it is… pure heaven.
Thank you for making heaven!
© May 2009, Sharon Wesolowski
http://www.ministryofthemother.org
