Poem for International Women's Day 2023 - Her Body is Good
The safety features
Of your car are
Designed, tested
And built on the
Presumption
That your body
Is standard male
Not any other
Diversion, aversion,
Of apex humanity.
Can you see him
In your mind already?
You know. He knows.
His body is good. But
Her breasts, womb,
Hips and hormones,
Lighter bones,
Are heresies.
Thus, we create
To accommodate his
Driving and thriving.
While other bodies
Bruise
With
Disbelieved wounds.
Invalid. Invalids.
I have a child’s
Bible that says
God completed
Creation then
Rested then
Constructed
Women after
Getting up on
The eighth day.
What does this say?
I read today
Of Bindi Irwin’s
Battle with pain
And being told
By a doctor
That pain
Was something
You simply
Deal with
As a woman.
Not first offered
Help and healing.
Not first shielded
by a system intent
On her flourishing.
But I guess in this
Consumer culture
When tools break
It’s cheaper to use
New tools than to
Treat and to tend.
The womb wanders,
Thought the ancients.
Wombs must be chained,
Said the moderns,
Puppy-milled to
Produce product
At any expense
To the unruly host.
But not granted
A safe seatbelt.
There are those
Within the church
Who debate
At the gate
Of salvation
That her mouth
Her heart
Are not fit
To fulfil
God’s Great
Commission.
If your Gospel
Begins at the fall
Then all bodies
Are putrid. And
If eschatology
Ends with earth
Destroyed, your
Body is void. But
If faith begins and
Ends in the garden
With God, then
Your body is good.
Wounded, bruised,
Cut and stitched,
Surviving
Subsisting
Wounds of sin
Errant systems
God is gardening
Back to Eden.
To belong.
Embedded.
Embodied.
Held safe
With God.
Hello, I’m Laura Tharion, and I am passionate about spreading the joy and wonder to be found in living a resurrected life inside Jesus Christ. I enjoy tea, cake, history, hammocks, wild bushland, gardening, reading, and gifting my favourite books into the hands of others. I had the pleasure of studying at Sydney Missionary and Bible College before my three lovely little boys arrived to fill my days. Here I picked up the pet soap-boxes of mission advocacy and teaching the Bible as one unified story. I have a heart to write—sermons, studies, articles, meditations, poetry, and epic novels, all which aim to explore theology and encourage everyone to fully realise all they have been given and commissioned in Christ.
