Re-Gifting the Spark: A Theology of Co-Creation for the Infertile

My last entry described a process I went through after a moment of grief I had upon watching the movie Brave. That moment not only helped me to let go of some of my guilt for stopping fertility treatments, it also helped me contemplate how to find my place as a co-creator when my body cannot create life. It is a question about identity, but it is larger than gender or sexual identity.

The reason I love the images of co-creation in theology is that it is active, life affirming yet in an empowering way, not one of dogma and doctrine. Many popular theologies are passive, waiting for or learning how something or someone acts and interpreting how we should react. My identity as a co-creator with God, as a crucial part of creation but also only one piece of an infinite puzzle, means that I am actively seeking my way in the world, actively seeking meaning and purpose, and also actively living my faith, promoting the goodness I desire to see in the world. What challenges this type of theology is in the more corporeal aspects of creation, the primal and practical aspects of survival in a very vibrant and visceral world. The desire to conceive and birth new life is about as primal and visceral as it gets.

For some people facing infertility, it is enough to realize that they are redirecting their love and energy towards raising adopted children as their own. Or at least that is what people tell me I should feel, so I assume someone must take comfort in it somewhere.

 On that night of cogitation, I berated myself, asking why I couldn't just let go of the birth obsession and focus on how I could love and raise some of the beautiful children in the world? Surely  it is a simple answer for a disciple of Christ, a minister whose life's work is to help reduce suffering in the world. Does it really matter if my children have my DNA or someone else's? Of course not. But…. I still feel betrayed. I still feel like my identity was snatched away from me.  I am not alright with God.

  If God is the ultimate Creator of all life and I'm made in the image of that, why is it I cannot create life and others can? If that is the truth, then I must be flawed, broken, and not truly in the image of God. Is that punishment? Is that deliberate so I make sure to realize that God holds all the power  and I'm really powerless?

Either way, I'm not convinced that the phrase "made in the image of God" really explains who we are or who God is. What I do believe is that our ability to be creative, unique, and complex reflects how creative, unique, and complex the entire universe is.

So, here I am, a person who will not conceive life in my own body. Let's imagine that the potential for life is within me; that potential is creative energy. Yes, I can redirect my creative energy to other forms of creating, such as writing. Yes, that creative energy can be directed towards other relationships and the creation of bonds between myself and others. But how can any of those compare to the energy and process of creating life? I don't believe they are even close. Yes, it all has value, but we must acknowledge the unique and complex process of creating life and the sacredness of such creativity. We cannot deny that all life is sacred and that the ability to create it is sacred as well.

 My undergraduate studies were in biology, especially biochemistry and developmental biology. I spent a lot of time contemplating the origin of life, how life evolved, and wanting to understand the mystery of existence as a sentient living being. My questions were not always so popular to my scientific-minded professors and  I discovered that the fundamentalist church I grew up in is not the only population to live with cognitive dissonance.

 I mention all this because when I studied biology and biochemistry, it fed my desire to understand and revel in the mysteries of life as a creative and distinctive process. It laid the foundation for my understanding of who we are and how we relate to God and the world. What happens when someone with such a foundation finds out that she is not part of the cycle of life, that her unique existence will not be contributing towards the building blocks of future generations? There will be no tangible contribution that will continue on after I'm gone. A piece of writing or the influence I have on people's hearts or minds is not the same as that. It is so different. Notice, I'm not placing a hierarchy of value on any of them, only pointing out that recognizing and valuing  the difference between them is important.

 So, where does that potential for life go if not utilized by my body? Creating life is a different energy than creating ideas or caring for others. One could argue that the particular form of energy for creating life can be transformed into a different kind of energy. That there is a way to change it within myself, like making a specialized cell convert back into an undifferentiated cell (think stem cell). Perhaps it sounds beneficial in the long run. But I'm not sure it is very efficient, let alone even possible.

 So, what I imagine is that this energy to create life is within me, I just don't have the working parts to go through the process. While I have limited control over whether my body can generate new life, I do have control over how that life creating energy is used. Instead of transforming it into the creation of inanimate or intangible things, I want to release it. I want the creative energy within myself to be used elsewhere, within someone else. I want that energy to still be used to create life, the mysterious and miraculous unique process of creating a human being. I don't want to transform it into writing a dissertation or developing better skills as a chaplain. I want the distinctive spiritual energy that sparks life within another to be gifted back to the universe, to be redirected to another who will create a beautiful soul.

  Then as I accept that my genetic material will not be part of the future, I can envision that the spiritual energy, the spark that starts life, is out there, somewhere, conceiving and giving birth to an amazing life. The energy within myself is not wasted or minimized or made to be something it is not. I can choose to gift that energy out to the universe, back to the Creator, and ask that it be give to someone who needs it. I can still be a part of the cycle of life. Yes, it is still as intangible as ideas or feelings, but it makes more sense to me.

 I choose to release the life creating spiritual energy back into the world. When my husband and I adopt, I choose to receive and accept back the miracle of life reflected in someone else's genetic makeup, but perhaps with the spark that I helped form and create.

  I find this concept also helps me contemplate how I will talk with my future adopted children about how I became their parent. I will not just say that I had love to give and chose to give it to them. Instead, my body could not make a baby, but my spirit sent out not only the desire to have a child, but the actual spark that helped create a child's spiritual self. OK, I won't say it like that, but that is what I will mean. I gifted my creative spirit to another so they could be born, or so another child could be born for someone else who greatly desired a child. And maybe, just maybe, the energy that sparked my own children's lives will be from me.  Either way, the potential for life is not really wasted. My power as a co-creator is not diminished because of an inability to conceive. Perhaps this perspective doesn't make sense to anyone else but me. Perhaps someone has already said it better than I. Or perhaps when I go back to school and analyze it under a hermeneutical microscope, there will be no shred of logic, no shred of philosophical thought that will back this idea up. I don't mind. Because it works for me. Because I now feel affirmed and reassured of my role as a co-creator once more.