Giving birth: life and creation

Finding out that I was indeed not pregnant, with a visit from la regla (in Spanish), I have been thinking about creating life. My first- and only- pregnancy gave me the experience of giving birth, and what it feels like to be a part of creation.

I read in Starhawk's The Earth Path this weekend, that the traditional (Judeo-Christian) creation story simply does not make sense with our eco-feminist experiences. Women bring life into the world through sweat, pain, and hella physical involvement. Yet, the Judeo-Christian creation story claims that a male god gave birth to the earth, and only with commandments, not any physical involvement whatsoever (except maybe a little of his breath blowing on the waters or some such nonsense).

After reading about this in Starhawk's book, I thought about how offended I felt. Here I had given birth to a beautiful daughter, through my own hard labor- hours of hard labor- and I'm supposed to believe that our earth and all its living inhabitants were "delivered" simply be a man saying "do it"? It is tough to swallow, now knowing first-hand what the delivery process really entails for a woman.

A man doesn't deserve the credit.


b.b.