IRA MAINE discourses on MOTHERS.

It may come as a surprise to some of us but Mothers are essential.  In the general scheme of things, and, taking everything else into consideration (and all things being equal) if God hadn’t invented Mothers we’d have had to do it ourselves.  Do you know just how much time, energy and resources we’d have had to devote to this essential research, just to get to where we are now?  And, if we had been required to commit ourselves to this end, do you realise where we’d be now?  At the very least, we’d be back, mark my words, somewhere in the Stone Age.

So, as you can gather from my preliminary remarks, and if you’ve followed me so far, God, by inventing Mothers, only just avoided (by the skin of His teeth) setting back humanity’s progress by some millions of years.  This level of blunder is, in my opinion, not good enough, not at all what we’ve come to expect.  If He has barely scraped in with this task, don’t you feel we have the right to know about His other blunders, the ones He has utterly failed at?

Take for instance, the ridiculous business of childbirth.  Now,as any farmer will tell you, in the animal kingdom, God got it absolutely right.  Moo-cows, horses, donkeys, rabbits, take your pick; every one produces offspring the which, within a few minutes, are up and about, gambolling, frisking, and behaving responsibly.  At absolutely no stage do they give even the slightest indication that they intend to be a  burden.  Au contraire, every tottering step they take demonstrates their commitment, and determination to seize independence first chance they get.

So, what the hell was God up to when it came to human beings?  A human child takes forever  to be independent of it’s mother.  Was he sick of the whole process and couldn’t be bothered? Or did He feel just a little bit blasé, a little bit cocky after His elephant and giraffe triumphs on the African savannah?  You could easily imagine Holy God, Mint Julep to hand, sitting back and basking in the glory as He accepted the adulation of the choirs and hosts of angels, not to mention presents of warm winter socks and boxes of chocolates.  All this glory and worship business might have easily distracted Him from His appointed course, or made Him think that compared to a ptereodactyl, making a human being would be a piece of cake.  Alternatively, and I am merely putting this idea forward speculatively, throwing it into the arena for general consideration but, what if Holy God, a bit frazzled with Africa and Mint Juleps, decided to have a bit of a creative second look at human beings?  He’d just roughed out a few sketches, had a few good ideas…

Their Mint Juleps freshened, laughing their heads off, God and Gabriel pored over the plans.

‘Hey’, said Gabriel, giggling and nudging God in the ribs, ‘lets make’em bald as a badger’s arse…’

‘What? No feathers?’.

‘And give the marsupial pouch the elbow!’

“Why? I thought that was a good idea….’

They’d have only used it as shopping bag!.’

‘Guilt! Lets give’em guilt! And ridiculously small ears!’.

“Yeah! And make’em walk everywhere…’

‘And premature ejaculation!’.

‘And doubt!, and no sense of smell!’.

“Hey, hey, hey! And premature ejaculation!’.

Steady on,what is it with you and PE?’

“Nothing…I just mentioned it…for fun…’.

“Wait! I’ve just had a great idea!. Why don’t we give the human girl something to compensate  for the absence of all the stuff we’ve just  taken away?.’

“Ok, ok, what do you reckon? Four stomachs? Horns? A big swishy tail?’

‘No, no, no. Let’s make her the start,the middle and the end of the Universe.  Lets make her the very life force itself, the source, the spring,the headwaters.  Lets make her the Mother of all things, the originator, the crucible from which all life emerges.  She is all that is profane and all that is sacred. She is, in the end, every living thing…’

‘I see. Without her we are nothing…’

“ Yes. She is God’.

“No room for a big swishy tail then, is there?