I wanted to read something that a member of my church sent me that I think is really very lovely and thoughtful, and I only wish I could give credit to the author. I don’t know who wrote this. It’s a story. The story begins:

In a mother’s womb were two babies. One asked the other, “Do you believe in life after delivery?”

And the other replies, “Well, of course! There has to be something after delivery. Maybe we’re here to prepare ourselves for what we will be later on.”

“Nonsense,” says the other. “There’s no life after delivery. What would that life be?”

And the first says, “I don’t know, but there will be more light than here. Maybe we’ll walk with our legs and eat from our mouths.”

The other says, “That’s absurd! Walking is impossible. And eat with our mouths? Ridiculous! The umbilical cord supplies nutrition. Life after delivery is to be excluded. The umbilical cord is too short.”

“I think there is something, and maybe it’s different from how it is here.”

The first says, “No one has ever come back from there. Delivery is the end of life. And in the after-delivery it is nothing but darkness and anxiety, and it takes us nowhere.”

“Well, I don’t know,” says the second, “but certainly we will see our mother and she will take care of us.”

“Mother?” the first says. “You believe in mother? Where is she now?”

The second says, “She’s all around us. It is in her that we live. Without her, there would not be this world.”

The first says, “I don’t see her, so it’s only logical that she doesn’t exist.”

The second says, “Sometimes when you’re in silence you can hear her and you can perceive her. I believe there is a reality after delivery, and we are here to prepare ourselves for that reality.”