It is a deeply intimate way of knowing God to co-create

Sometimes I think about Mary, the mother of Jesus. I think about the mystery of her co-creating Jesus with God. I believe in the immaculate conception, but that does not mean Jesus was an alien. He was not carried in Mary’s womb as foreign object. Mary was not an incubator hatching an egg. Jesus was flesh of her flesh, bone of her bone. Jesus’ DNA was part Mary’s DNA. His cells carried her mitochondria. Mary was Theotokos, God-bearer. While he was from God, he was also from Mary. In that sense, she very much co-created Jesus on a biological level, birthing him out of her very body. Her body risking death to give him life, as all mothers do. It is a deeply intimate way of knowing God, to carry something from the depths of what is inside you and bring it into the world with pain, perseverance, and sacrifice.