Creating Forward // April 2023

Charity

This one is a long time coming. I knew I wanted to do something related to Charity and the sculpture of Latona (see below) because it was a big part of where I got the idea for this project.

While visiting the Met last winter, we stumbled upon this sculpture. I was especially taken with it, because it reminded me of caring for my twins. It reminded my sister of the paintings of Charity she has seen, which also are often women caring for or nurturing multiple children. This was a genesis moment for me. Having mothered four young children close in age, I often felt my work was invisible and lowly on my hardest days. I found out I was pregnant with twins while my older two children were a mere 3 and 1 year old. Looking at this sculpture in front of me, and now multiple works of art titled Charity, I appreciated the work of good art and artists in a new light. These works went beyond helping me feel seen as a mother. Seeing that through centuries, it was understood that mothering is charitable - a love that suffers and is kind - propelled into deeper understanding of what I already knew, but sometimes can forget, is true about mothering. A motherly love is charitable.

Latona and her Children, William Henry Rhinehart, 1874

Latona was the Roman Goddess of night, and here she is caring for her twins Apollo and Diana, fathered by Jupiter. I had to laugh as I read about her being the goddess of night - maybe this is how we should identify ourselves during all those sleepless nights of motherhood.

Charity, Guido Reni, circa 1620

Mothering through the little years of my children was truly wonderful and incredibly hard. It broke me at times. But I remember the words of Callie Feyen - “a beating heart is a breaking heart” - and in the breaking and the living is the loving.

This year, our twins turned five. I spent so many appointments of my pregnancy with them watching and listening for two little heartbeats. Somehow my body contained and grew them for 37 weeks. Now they bounce around and I snag them just long enough for a hug and to hear each of their heartbeats on either side. Having twins required so much charitable love from me, but I know it grew charitable love between all six of us. The way Jason cared for me in my hardest days, and the way my children loved each other as well as me.

Makoto Fujimura talks in his book Silence and Beauty about how God’s motherly love is often a missed conversation, specifically among Eastern cultures. He makes the connection of how Christ, being born of Mary, came to earth and lived out such charitable, motherly love. It’s easy to let the idea of “God as Father” limit our understanding of His fatherly and motherly attributes. Thankfully, we have art to help us challenge those tendencies. Charity suffers long, and is kind (I Corinthians 13:4). Thanks be to God for his charitable love towards us and among us.