Parenthood.
To have a child is to approve of creation from the bottom of one's heart; it's to say to the God who is tormenting us: 'Lord, all's right with the world and I offer thanks to thee for having created it.' Bariona, in: Bariona, or the Son of Thunder. [In]: The Writings of Jean-Paul Sartre. Vol.2. P.90.
The Virgin is pale and she's looking at the child. What you ought to paint on her face is an anxious amazement which has been seen only one time on a human face. Because Christ is her child, the flesh of her flesh and the fruit of her bowels. She carried him for nine months and she'll give him her breast and her milk will become God's blood. And at times the temptation is so great she forgets that he is God. She hugs him in her arms and says, My little baby! But other times she's all flabbergasted and she thinks God is there - and she feels overcome by a religious horror at this silent God, this terrifying child. Because all mothers are pulled up short that way sometimes in front of that rebellious bit of their flesh which is their child, and they feel like exiles even though they're just a step away from this new life that has been made out of their life, and that houses a stranger's thoughts. But no other child has been more cruelly and quickly torn from his mother, because he is God and he far surpasses anything she can imagine. (...) And no woman has had her God just for herself that way. A tiny little God you can take in your arms and cover with kisses, a God all warm and smiling and breathing, a God you can touch, who's alive. (...) Bariona, or the Son of Thunder. [In]: The Writings of Jean-Paul Sartre. Vol.2. P.121.
Christ is born for all the world's children, Bariona, and each time a child is born, Christ will be born in him, and through him to be forever mocked, along with him, by all the pains of life, and in him and through him, to escape all those pains. Forever. He has come to tell the blind, the disabled, the unemployed, and the prisoners of this world, "You should not keep from having children. For even for the blind and the disabled and the unemployed and the prisoners there is joy." Bariona, or the Son of Thunder. [In]: The Writings of Jean-Paul Sartre. Vol.2. P.131.
Last updated: 2006/11/02