In York Minster there is a statue of the Pieta carved from the trunks of two great oaks. The huge figure of the sorrowing mother cried out to me as I stood in the midst of a throng of tourists. Returning a few minutes later I found that the crowd had moved on, and I was able to spend a little time in contemplation. She seemed to embody all the pain of the bereaved mother, yet more than that, I felt the suffering of the Earth at the destruction we wreak upon her ecosystems in the name of progress. I wept inwardly.

Sometimes our tears can "wash our eye window" as Anna says, and enable us to see things as they really are. In the depth of agony there is a tiny seed of hope, though it may be hard to see. Sometimes we see the transfiguration of people who have undergone extreme suffering when they become transparent to the divine, radiant with inner light. We recently celebrated the life and death of a healer, Latifa Peggie Phillips, who died in January. Towards the end of her life her spine was cruelly twisted by osteoporosis and she was often in great pain, she who had been a dancer. Yet as her body failed her spirit shone more and more brightly and was an inspiration to everyone.

As I gazed at the carving, I became aware of a gleam of light which transfigures her despair, a promise of new life. But what does this mean for us now? I turned to Desert Wisdom for elucidation on the teachings of Jesus on rebirth.

Neil Douglas-Klotz offers a new interpretation of rebirth in his translation of the conversation between Jesus and Nicodemus:

unless a human being returns
to that sameness with the cosmos
which feels like death -
the dark moist place of birthing
.......... That person cannot extend
to touch and feel at home in the power and beauty of the Source.
John 3.3-8

Suffering is not the only way to reach that place; it is accessible through meditation.

Hazrat Inayat Khan said:
For the soul to be born again means that it is awakened after having come on earth; and entering the kingdom of heaven means entering this world in which we are now standing, the same kingdom which turns into heaven as soon as the point of view has changed. .... it is we who change it from earth to heaven. The Sufi Message Vol. VIII

Indeed, our best hope for the future of the planet must lie in our rediscovery of own place in the development of life, as part of the great cosmic story. Once again from the "dark moist place of birthing" creativity must arise. For what we need, as Swimme and Berry point out, is a Creation myth for our time, which takes into account the latest scientific discoveries and is acceptable to a culture which has largely rejected the traditional.