"Baby mine..."

"Baby mine, don't you cry.
Baby mine, dry your eyes.
Rest your head close to my heart,
never to part, baby of mine..."
-Churchhill/Washington

These lyrics from "Baby Mine" which Mama Jumbo sings to her baby in Disney's Dumbo, leave me speechless (and weeping) everytime I hear them.  In an instant I am transported back to a day that is etched on my heart indelibly. I am sitting in the back of an enormous Land Rover in the middle of the the African bush on photographic safari.  It is late Spring and we are less than fifty yards from a mother elephant and her baby.  Our guide reminds us that rampant poaching has made this picture of African serenity rare.   I am holding my three week old daughter in my arms and the connection between the four of us...mama elephant and her baby, me and my daughter...echoes across the veld and through the dry red African air like a call to prayer.  This song sweeps across my heart and I am as taken apart by it then as I was the first time I heard it in a dark Marshalltown, Iowa movie theatre when I was 8. 

These are not animated Disney characters.  There are no colorful circus tents, talking giraffes, dancing crows, or silly clowns that would soften the blow of watching a mother elephant being taken from her child.  The love is very real here.  I can actually feel the tenderness that flows through the soft curl of her trunk around her baby's chest.  It is as if we share some primordial energy causing my arm to softly curve beneath my daughter's back when I see her trunk tighten around her baby's foreleg.  We are two women and two babies.  We are mothers and daughters, devoted parent and child, trusting infant and Love-impelled mom.  There is no hierarchy of species, there is no sophistry in our communication.  We are moved by something divine...

here is the poem that fell onto the page that night...I found it in an old journal today...

loving you is not a
choice

it is a divine imperative

it is
an insistent demand

a
moment of undeniable
spiritual impulsion
on
the sea of our
deepest inner longings

it is the
coincidence
of the human and the divine

the
"as in heaven…
     so on earth"

the Word
     made flesh

the kingdom of heaven
within

the Emmanuel
    or
"God with us"…in me

it is all that is
good
and pure
and
holy
in
the universe

it is the
holy kiss

the
song
of
Solomon

it is voice of
the turtle
heard in our land

it is
the desire
that is prayer

the sweet agony of
Gethsemane,
Calvary…..
          the morning meal
          on the shores
          of the Gallilean Sea

loving you is not
a choice

loving you
came
in an
empty manger
cold and
lonely
yet
full of
grace

loving you
is not a choice

it is as
choiceless as
the flower turning
toward the light

the leaf
turning its
veins to the rain

the roots
digging deeper for
water

the dew
lifting
to echo
the open
call
of the sun's
demand for morning

it is a force
from within

the sweet pull
of
the moon upon
the water's body
of complacency
making  it
kiss the
shore in
a crescendo
of foam
and fury


loving you is not
a choice
it is
free of
decision…
reason…
pros and cons…
hypothetical "what ifs"

It is…
simply…
what is

i love you "baby mine"...
Mum