On Openness

On Openness
Psalm 139

My wife carries in her purse a photograph of her prospective grandchild, an image from her daughter’s sonogram. It is extraordinary to have this vivid reminder of the way a baby is steadily developing in the womb. When the prospective mother is sick, as she was a couple of weeks ago, we all worry a little about the effect this may have on the baby’s development. In some cultures, mother and grandmother would be knitting clothes for the baby so that the weaving of the limbs of a new person in the womb is paralleled by the creativity that goes on outside the womb. I am not sure whether a sense of wonder at this process is enhanced through our knowing more about the way the baby develops stage by stage or whether it would be enhanced by not being able to trace the fetus’s development and instead being confronted by the fully formed baby at birth...