Birthing II

December 19, 2025

Before beginning today's blog I’d like to follow up on the pregnancy-related Birthing blog from ten days ago.

I’d love to hear what has come forward from your time of reflection and Advent waiting. This place of openness to new life, to creativity in this tumultuous time.

Please share with me if you’re comfortable: vancouverspiritualdirection@gmail.com

In this second "Birthing" blog my focus is on the season of Christmas. That is, the time that Christian churches focus on the actual birth and early days of Jesus’ life.

Anyone who has birthed a child or birthed any newness into the world, (e.g. a new group, a video, a book, a garden, a renovation, etcetera) knows that giving birth isn't always easy. In fact it can often be downright hard.

Reflecting on the story of the baby Jesus this Christmas of 2025 seems important in the context of our present world. Jesus was born in a particularly harsh time. He and his parents were refugees who fled from the "birthing-stable" in Bethlehem to a Egypt, a completely new country. His parents were running away from King Herod who’d decreed killing of all male children under two, (see Matthew 2:13). The family's story seems to echo the lives of many of today's migrants.

The Holy Family’s flight to Egypt was inspired by an angelic visitation. The angel came to Mary's husband Joseph in one of his night dreams and told him of Herod’s murderous intentions. And then the angel instructed Joseph to flee with his family to Egypt.

So, Jesus, Mary, and Josephs’ lives were upended by one specific spiritual experience that involved an angel who came in a night dream, [1]. This type of spiritual experience is similar to what Rosalie Norman-McNaney describes as a “birth-quake,” [2].

For Norman-McNaney, birth-quakes are “reconciling and renewing growth spurts” in one's spiritual journey that mostly come through “trials and tribulations,” [3].

Certainly, Jesus and his family experienced trials and tribulations which began with his entry into the physical world.

Norman-McNaney says that birth-quakes involve wrestling within one's soul and can bring forth new beginnings, new visions, and can help us align us with Spirit’s plan for our lives, [4].

While Joseph and Mary probably wrestled in their souls about uprooting their entire lives based on an angelic dream, I don’t know if they would have immediately seen it as an experience for their own spiritual growth. Perhaps they might have after they'd reached safety and had some time to reflect.

I too have experienced large and small spiritual birth-quakes in my life. I agree with Norman-McNaney that each challenge, trauma and/or ending did bring me into new ways of being in relationship with the Holy. And that each birth-quake eventually led me into new opportunities and new awarenesses.

But I know that I often needed quite a lot of time to reflect before I saw any goodness that had come through these life-altering spiritual events.

Today’s spiritual practice invitation is to take time, (at least 10-45 minutes) to prayerfully reflect back on your life. Begin with your own birth and go forward decade by decade. As you reflect, seek out and ponder deeply on any spiritual experiences that have been significant in your life journey

You may want to draw or journal your spiritual life story.

Some questions to ponder during and/or after your reflection:

1. Which were your peak spiritual experiences and what, if anything did you learn from them?

2. Did you and/or your life change from any of these spiritual birth-quakes? If so, how?

3. How did your relationship with the Source of Life change from one or more of these experiences?

Dear readers;

May you have a blessed Christmas. Over the next few weeks I will be spending time with my beloveds. My next blog offering will be on Stargazing, January 6, 2026. Love and prayers, Tanya

1. If you want to return to my blogs on angels and night dreams see https://www.vancouverspiritualdirection.com/single-post/angels-saints-and-ancestors and https://www.vancouverspiritualdirection.com/single-post/dreams

2. Rosalie Norman-McNaney, Spiritual Journey for the Birthing of My Soul in Embodied Spirits: Stories of Spiritual Directors of Color, ed. Sherry Bryant-Johnson, Rosalie Norman-McNaney & Therese Taylor-Stinson, New York, Morehouse Publishing, 2014, 81-82.

3. Rosalie Norman-McNaney, Spiritual Journey for the Birthing of My Soul, 82.

4. Ibid.

   
   

This blog is dedicated to the memory of Maureen Fowler, a beloved spiritual mentor.