Having born, nurtured, and lost our children, mothers know from experience about hope and fear. We have contemplated the big questions of being and non-being not only with our minds, but also with our bodies. Being granted the ability to give life, we are also confronted with the fragility and insecurity of all life, and the joys and sorrows motherhood carries in its core. There is in all of us, sons and daughters, a deep longing for our motherly home. HILDEGARD OF BINGEN has seen this deep longing embedded at the heart of human creation: In one of her stunning illuminations she pictures the soul's journey from being embodied in her mother's womb to her search for her spiritual home to set up her tent… For [Hildegard], motherhood has always also been a powerful metaphor for the life force of all creation… Thus, we do not need to be mothers, not even women, to participate in the mystery of birth. We all have the spiritual ability to birth new life, to create and recreate. We all know about the "birthing pain" whenever wisdom or new insight is born in us, know the joy which ensouls us when we are first pregnant with and then give birth to the holy within us. As we also know the fragility of this journey and the places of pain and loss within. And like mothers we can offer comfort and warm embrace to our own and to other’s struggling souls. - Almut Furchert