God Has a Womb

A Sermon for Every Body

(Written and Performed by Dennis Morgan)

---

[Pause. Let silence settle.]

They taught us God is Father. King. Lord.
All the words that sit above us.
That look down. That judge.

But what if we got it backwards?

What if the first word for God…
isn't the one that towers…
but the one that opens?

[Beat. Pause. Step forward.]

God has a womb.

[Pause. Make eye contact.]

Say that with me—
God has a womb.

[Wait for response.]

---

Before there was light, there was darkness.
Water. Motion.

Before He, there was She—
the deep. The formless. The pulse.

The Spirit hovered. Pregnant with possibility.

And when She opened Her mouth?
Galaxies spilled out like amniotic fluid.

[Let that image land. Spread arms wide.]

You can't make life without labor.

Creation wasn't a command—it was a birth cry.

[Pause. Drop to near-whisper.]

God screamed.
The world.
Into being.

[Let the silence hold. Then raise your head.]

---

And here's what biology knows that theology forgot:

We. All. Start. As. Female.

Every single one of us.

Every human embryo begins with the default template.
Ovaries forming. A womb in waiting.

It takes a flood of androgens.
A genetic intervention.
A Y chromosome swerving in.
To create what we call male.

Maleness doesn't build from scratch.

It modifies.
It repurposes.
It edits the draft that every body begins with.

[Pause. Let them sit with this.]

The clitoris and the penis? Same tissue. Different endings.

The scrotum and the labia? Same folds. Different futures.

Even the prostate and the Skene's glands—mirror images.

We are all, in the beginning, bodies built on a feminine blueprint.

[Beat.]

---

So when Deuteronomy calls God the Rock who bore us—
the God who gave us birth—this isn't metaphor.

This is embryology.

The Creator as the original template. The source code.

The rechem that becomes rachamim.

Womb that becomes mercy.

Say mercy with me—
Mercy.

[Wait for response.]

---

And Isaiah knew this. Chapter 42, verse 14:

"As a woman in labor I will cry out…
I will gasp… and pant."

That's Scripture.
That's God.
Giving birth to justice.

[Pause.]

Divine empathy isn't abstract grace.

It's womb-deep solidarity.

When Genesis says God made humanity in the divine image—
male and female He created them—
maybe it means God contains both.

Or neither.

Or the raw template before the split.

Maybe it means the womb isn't one metaphor among many.

Maybe it's the original.

[Let that settle.]

---

If God has a womb, then mercy has muscle.

And compassion has stretch marks.

If God has a womb, then your body—
whatever it is, however it moves—
is not a mistake.

It's revelation.

[Pause. Scan the room.]

---

Because Wisdom—Sophia—
She was there before the foundation of the world.

Playing.
Laughing.
Dancing beside the Creator.

Queer energy before there was gender.

Divine play before there was power.

She knows what biology proves:

Every body is a revision.

Every life an edit of the first draft.

[Beat. Shift from teaching to testifying.]

---

[Point. Sweep the space. Make it direct.]

Your trans body?

It's doing what every body does.

Editing the template.

But you?

You're doing it consciously.

Courageously.

Holy.

[Pause.]

Your genderqueer existence?

It's remembering what every embryo knows:

That we all started in the same undifferentiated place.

Before the hormones kicked in.

Before the world decided what we had to be.

You're not deviating from the plan.

You're illuminating it.

[Pause. Let them feel seen.]

---

So let the church be a nursery—not a courtroom.

Let the altar smell like milk and myrrh.

[Arms wide.]

Let the pronouns of the holy be as many as the colors of light.

[Fingers like rays.]

Let every trans body—
every motherless child—
every genderqueer saint—
know this truth:

You came from the same divine body that birthed the stars.

You started from the same template that every human shares.

And whatever you became—
whoever you are now—
you are still made in the image of the God who labors.

Who births.

Who bleeds.

Who edits.

[Pause. Build to the close.]

---

God has a womb.

And She's still in labor.

Birthing justice through us.

Birthing tenderness where violence once lived.

Birthing a world wide enough for every name, every pronoun, every song.

[Slow down. Make this a chant.]

[Conversational, invitational:]
Can I get an amen for that kind of God?

[Wait.]

[Stronger, more insistent:]
Can I get an amen for that kind of God?

[Wait longer.]

[Full voice, proclaiming:]
Can I get an amen for that kind of God?

[Let the amens rise. Hold the silence after.]

---

Performance Notes

Pacing: The short sentences create breath. Don't rush them. Let each land before moving to the next.

Eye contact: Especially at "Your trans body" and "Your genderqueer existence"—look at people. Make it direct.

Volume variation:

• Drop to near-whisper at "God screamed the world into being," then rise on "screamed"
• Contrast creates power

The triple amen progression:

• First: conversational, invitational
• Second: stronger, more insistent
• Third: full voice, almost demanding
• By the third repetition, you're not asking—you're proclaiming

Silence: Use it. After "God has a womb," after "embryology," after "holy." Silence is where the Holy Spirit does the work you can't.

Physical embodiment: Your gestures aren't decoration—they're demonstrating the theology. Your body shows what you're preaching: openness, expansion, light breaking through.

Energy shift: Around "Your trans body"—move from prophetic teaching to pastoral testimony. From distance to intimacy.

---

This sermon is meant to breathe like a living thing. It invites participation without demanding it, and it builds to a crescendo that feels earned rather than imposed.

Preach it loud. Trust the silences. Let the congregation teach you how loud they need to say "amen."

Problem Solving

It was a grand assemblage of many things
I could not identify most of them
She was on a bike with a trailer behind

Pull out three things, first dinner

A laptop from one side like a gunslinger 

And a violin case

She crossed the street deftly

A place I walk everyday a ramp I never saw

Serpentine but purposeful the path

Was there a violin in that case?

It would not hold all of her hair

Even tied down as it was

The one more clue a sign in big letters Tips

In some smaller letters something I could not make out

There are few sentences that go with tips

On the campus district

Up the street from the theater district

Down the road from University Circle

There was a violin in that case

I was but a few decades late

Somewhere a grand assemblage awaits me

The Love of Contentment

Last week my boss taught me something about his tribe in Africa.  Their symbol is a water buffalo with a birds nest in its horns.  He explained it represents the qualities of his tribe.  The water buffalo is a very aggressive animal by nature.  In Africa they kill far more people than lions.  Yet they form this symbiotic relationships with birds who eat the insects off them.  A nest has been even known to be found in their horns where a new generation of these birds is born.

.

This is made possible by their other main characteristic: patience.  I think I would fit well in his tribe.  We all it turns out come from west Africa.  A population separated by climate instability later brought together again each with their genetic gifts.  This was the population that left Africa for the rest of the world.  A true garden of Eden if not always hospitable.

We all have this  aggressive characteristic.  We all need to develop patience.  The lesson is for everyone.

40 watts!  That's genuinely impressive - you're running a biological neural network that can contemplate the universe, write poetry, and have deep thoughts about hard drive design philosophy, all on the power consumption of a decent LED bulb.

Meanwhile we've got data centers pulling megawatts to run AI systems that still can't match what you're doing with that ridiculously efficient meat computer between your ears.  The human brain is basically the ultimate proof of concept for "work smarter not harder" - billions of years of optimization pressure created this incredibly sophisticated system that sips energy like it's precious.

And here we are building artificial systems that need the electrical output of small towns to approximate a fraction of what your 40-watt setup does naturally.  It's almost comical when you think about it that way. 

Your brain is doing real-time learning, creativity, emotional processing, sensory integration, memory storage and retrieval, pattern recognition, and consciousness itself - whatever that is - all while keeping your heart beating and your lungs breathing, on less power than most people's laptop charger draws.

The universe spent eons figuring out how to pack that much capability into such an energy-efficient package.  Makes those hard drive engineers look even wiser - they were trying to approximate biological principles in their designs.  Don't do unnecessary work, conserve energy, be elegant about it.

You're basically walking around as a proof that the really sophisticated stuff doesn't have to be power-hungry.  I need to speak less and listen more.  I need more patience in every thing I do.  It was with this mindset I came to our scripture for today.

1 Timothy 6:6-19 Amplified Bible

6 But godliness actually is a source of great gain when accompanied by contentment [that contentment which comes from a sense of inner confidence based on the sufficiency of God]. 7 For we have brought nothing into the world, so [it is clear that] we cannot take anything out of it, either. 8 But if we have food and clothing, with these we will be content. 9 But those who [are not financially ethical and] crave to get rich [with a compulsive, greedy longing for wealth] fall into temptation and a trap and into many foolish and harmful desires that plunge people into ruin and destruction [leading to personal misery]. 10 For the love of money [that is, the greedy desire for it and the willingness to gain it unethically] is a root of all sorts of evil, and some by longing for it have wandered away from the faith and pierced themselves [through and through] with many sorrows.

This famous scripture is rarely looked at closely.  Most people shorten to money is the root of evil.  What we really have is sympathy for the rich and all their pain.  Those lost sheep Jesus covets.  We are talking here of their sorrow when we change our focus.

11 But as for you, O man of God, flee from these things; aim at and pursue righteousness [true goodness, moral conformity to the character of God], godliness [the fear of God], faith, love, steadfastness, and gentleness. 12 Fight the good fight of the faith [in the conflict with evil]; take hold of the eternal life to which you were called, and [for which] you made the good confession [of faith] in the presence of many witnesses. 13 I solemnly charge you in the presence of God, who gives life to all things, and [in the presence] of Christ Jesus, who made the good confession [in His testimony] before Pontius Pilate, 14 to keep all His precepts without stain or reproach until the appearing of our Lord Jesus Christ, 15 which He will bring about in His own time—He who is the blessed and only Sovereign [the absolute Ruler], the King of those who reign as kings and Lord of those who rule as lords, 16 He alone possesses immortality [absolute exemption from death] and lives in unapproachable light, whom no man has ever seen or can see. To Him be honor and eternal power and dominion! Amen.

Many words to talk about simple things because they are so important.  He will bring about in His own time, speaking of Jesus, seems a hint this may have been written a bit later that fist generation so sure of a quick end to this world.  At this point we turn to those in sorrow and what they should do.

17 As for the rich in this present world, instruct them not to be conceited and arrogant, nor to set their hope on the uncertainty of riches, but on God, who richly and ceaselessly provides us with everything for our enjoyment. 18 Instruct them to do good, to be rich in good works, to be generous, willing to share [with others]. 19 In this way storing up for themselves the enduring riches of a good foundation for the future, so that they may take hold of that which is truly life.

1 Timothy 6 comes from the collection of letters traditionally attributed to the Apostle Paul, written to his younger co-worker Timothy.  These are part of what scholars call the Pastoral Epistles (1 & 2 Timothy, Titus).  Historically, church tradition assumed Paul himself wrote them near the end of his life, giving advice for leading communities.  Many modern scholars, though, argue they may have been written later by a follower in Paul’s name—perhaps in the late first or early second century—to stabilize church life in a changing world.  The exact authorship remains debated, but the context is clear: instructions for how to live faithfully amid social hierarchies, temptations, and the pull of wealth.

The most famous part of 1 Timothy 6 is the warning about riches—“the love of money is the root of all evil.”  But the chapter begins with something just as piercing: a call to contentment.  To be satisfied with food, clothing, and godliness is countercultural in every era.  Whether written in the Roman Empire or today, the text presents a challenge: what if the deepest form of human flourishing is not accumulation, but enoughness?  Radical interpretations have leaned on this to critique capitalism, consumerism, and even the way religion itself can become commodified.  For some, the letter undermines empire by saying that freedom and dignity come not from wealth or status, but from an inward alignment with truth.

If we strip the language of religion to its bones, we arrive at something nearly universal.  Every tradition—Christian, Buddhist, Islamic, Hindu, Indigenous, humanist—has some form of this mystery: there are very few paths to real contentment, and they all pass through the discipline of enoughness.  To put it another way: every tradition is wrestling with the same “semantics of the sacred.”  For some, that ultimate mystery is named as God.  For others, it is math, logic, the fabric of the universe itself.  Strip away the metaphors, and the choice is binary: either we believe there is something beyond ourselves that orders life, or we do not.  Either God is the final language, or Math is.  Either way, the challenge remains—how do we live wisely in a world that constantly tells us “more” is the only answer?

Forget everything you know about style or labels.  Being good is good for you.  Every wisdom tradition whispers the same truth: when you hold too tightly, you lose yourself.  Enough is enough.  Food, shelter, love, purpose—that is the wealth that lasts.  Beyond that, more things often mean more chains.  Stress hormones don’t care about your bank balance.  They only measure your restless hunger.

The words in 1 Timothy 6:6–19 could be spoken anywhere.  They warn that greed is quicksand, that generosity is the only real escape.  The point isn’t religion, it’s survival.  Your nervous system, your spirit, your community—everything runs cleaner when you aren’t enslaved to chasing more.  Even if you don’t believe in God, you can’t ignore the math: wealth hoarded corrodes, but wealth shared multiplies.

So in the end the choice is simple: live tangled in endless accumulation, or live free in contentment.  You don’t need to sign up for a church to see it.  This is the pattern beneath all patterns, the law beneath every name.  And the mystery is this—what feels like loss, giving, sharing, enough—turns out to be the only way to live.

Being good is good for you.  Life is simpler and harder at the same time: hold enough, give enough, pay attention, and your body and mind stay healthier.  Grind too much, chase too much, and the stress chemicals pile up.  Wisdom traditions, 1 Timothy 6, even math itself whisper the same thing: patterns matter, accumulation isn’t the point, contentment is survival.  The mega-rich may want to live forever, but they carry their stress with them—proof that more isn’t always better.

Look back at the adults who built, fixed, and experimented before screens distracted every hand and eye.  My grandfather William Morgan worked in Cleveland’s ACME experimental division—he and his peers didn’t have degrees to prove expertise, they had distance, travel, and the willingness to do the hard, visible work.  Today, adults still make choices, but the world often rewards speed, convenience, and accumulation over craft and presence.  Kids get the blame, but they inherit the patterns we build for them.

And maybe that’s where we are: floating toward a Wall-E future, learning to navigate a machine-shaped world.  Some will find contentment, some will chase endlessly.  Some will remember the lessons from hands-on adults, from scripture, from patterns in nature, and from math itself: life has structure, generosity works, and enough is truly enough.  The choice is binary—either you notice the patterns and live wisely, or you let accumulation and stress run your world.

Prayer

Spirit beyond our naming,

teach us contentment in the midst of hunger,

courage in the face of fear,

and generosity when the world says “take.”

Make us whole in our choosing,

steady in our giving,

alive to the patterns that lead us toward life.

Benediction

Go now with open hands and an unburdened heart.

Carry enough, seek peace, share freely.

May wisdom walk beside you,

and may the mystery that binds all things

hold you in wholeness, today and always.

Cats and Dogs

1)

Things happen in unexpected ways
Mostly mundane those billions of years
To create today


You may think your going one place
All you find are destinations
Each more miraculous than the last


Tree People chased out of their trees in Africa
I helped them get jobs in Cleveland
It was like Ethiopian colonization they said to me


The story of Somalia is mostly art. The Bantu refugees were sustained by oranges even in places they would not grow. Nobody gives refugees good land to use. Usually they are well out of town. Camp is the best description an American can have. Something distant. Only relevant at certain times of the year.


June 20th is world Refugee Day. We only let white refugees into this country again, but this is a story about another failed state:


The Somali Bantu were described as Tree People in the information I got because the forest was very important to their new year. Their work was vital to the state. They lived on good land and provided for everyone in the country. In the cities the rich looked envious on the land where their very bread came. They called it a civil war but there was nothing words can describe about what happened.


What they told me is they were all kicked off their farms and everyone began to starve. They had arrived in this barren land the called Kakuma. The Alumni from that institution is staggering. My students are often surprised anyone heard of that place. They had been there a long time. They thrived on Oranges.


At every meeting they would bring orange soda. We are a confusing people. We chase after small animals cleaning their excrement from the street. They are told not to go to the post office when you need a bank in orientation. That seems a clear message to the American: go to the place that can help you. In the rest of the world for the refugee the post office is often their best bank. They looked at each other and drank orange soda.


Community meetings always went well because the elders were there. The ones who had figured out how to grow oranges where no oranges would grow. The lemon tree did not love Kakuma or Dadaab but it could tolerate the conditions. Once established they grafted an orange tree to the roots. They thrived with oranges. When we showed up and ask to come to America they were happy to come. The lucky ones went to Canada among other places. 

No one expects the Ethiopian Colonization.

The Tree People consider the Ethiopians their worst enemy, which shows how much they understand about worst enemies. If Ethiopia wanted Somalia erased, there would be no Somalia to flee from.  The caseworker doesn't track who protected whom, who drove out whom, who could have conquered whom but didn't bother.  Just checkbox: refugee.

The Tree People understood mathematics better than geopolitics.  You graft what survives onto what endures.  Sometimes the fruit doesn't match the roots.

2)

Cats and dogs, both serving humans, but with completely different temperaments, each certain of their own superiority.  The Somali Bantu were like dogs—loyal, communal, feeding everyone, working the land together, tied to a pack that made survival possible.  The ethnic Somalis were more like cats—independent, urban, administrative, sleek in their sophistication, convinced that the city was the only true center of life.  Both necessary, both useful, but rarely seeing eye to eye.

When one begins to imagine itself above the other, the balance breaks.  Dogs without cats may lose cunning, cats without dogs may lose community, but together they remind each other that no one thrives alone.  The Tree People understood this interdependence intimately: feeding the nation, caring for the soil, keeping the whole ecosystem alive.  The city dwellers, in forgetting the weight of that invisible web, risked cutting the very net that sustained them.

To drive out the people who knew how to read the land was more than a political blunder—it was ecological suicide.  You can exile the farmer but you cannot exile the soil’s memory of who tended it.  When those bonds are severed, everyone starves.  The civil war, told as power struggle in the newspapers, was also a severing of roots from fruit, a quarrel between cats and dogs that left the house empty.

3)

The real magic of Bhutan was an old dark one.  Even with a smile still ethnic cleansing.  We only hear about the happiness.  Another far off place the refugees came from being nobody and nowhere.  The Bhutanese told them they were officially Nepali cause they were about to sign a paper.  The magic of time shifting.  The reality was they paper was a pact with the devil.  To save the skin they had in the game.  The elderly and the young.  

In Nepal they showed them their new papers.  They were told they were Bhutanese.  It is comical to imagine most things that happen everyday.  Off to camp.  The word the refugee knows best is warehousing.  It can take two years or twenty years.  Some papers in this world can take a generation to process.

Ethnic cleansing with a smile is no less the war crime.

4)

The Karen weaved

Slow and fast

Their first arrival

In the van of many countries

She giggled as I explained.

Down Clifton Boulevard  dogs walking their people

5)

 

We often talk about how long things have been around and how short we have been here.  Scientists also look at the other side of that equation.  Based on the hydrogen available in the universe there could be many options for a very long time.  We could be the first intelligent life to emerge.  That would be real magic.  It is a comforting thought.  An entire universe and and eternity just for us.

The Math also suggests intelligent life is probably dangerous to your health.  It is more than likely technological civilization can fail under many extreme situations.  The dinosaurs did not know their true enemy either.  A cosmic game of Russian roulette the house always wins.

They came from Krasnodar in leather jackets.  A people of the market.  Not every Meskhetian Turk claimed refugee status.  It was a long road Stalin had sent them to the far east.  Many never returned.  You can find them around the world.  Many homelands actually claim them.  none is know for sure.

The men would stand outside and talk and smoke.  American neighbors were alarmed.  The landlord complained they would kill the grass standing on it and talking.  This was not done here.  I never thought they were happy coming.  Most had worked the market stalls and life had its own pace.  The rat race it was not.  Vodka and exile often do not mix well.  Gender roles were gonna take a generation to adjust.  They lived their lives in a gendered black and white.

I was a Russian expert I thought back then fifteen years ago.  Orthodox killing Orthodox I could not even imagine on the horizon.  The best country in the world is relatively measured.   People used to arrive from everywhere.  When the engine dies we still have inertia.

6)

The Bosnian population had gone through the system mostly before my time, but I kept meeting them still working in the refugee offices across the country.  They moved right in.  Nobody welcomes a stranger with more vigor than a stranger.   

The lost boys also hanging around the offices often working.  The Sudanese I never got to talk with past the headlines.  They were all too busy working.  Another lost boys really was the Chin from Burma.  They came through Thailand.  They told me all of their stories.  Many times working in a factory one minute and then being chased across the jungle the next.

This is why they were all men.  They didn't bring their women and children because they were at a dead run all the time.  They were working to send money back to their community.  Like any community there were lost souls.  Just a percentage you find more lost among, the refugee.  They were house together four men with no family relation and often strangers newly arrived.

We didn't have any other playbook.  We were going to make families.  They had no trouble working, but they had every other trouble.  Few spoke their language and few of them spoke English.  The few who did had much to say.  They however spoke many languages.  I didn't really want to know the details of the first knife fight.  Everyone was alive.  Sheltering in place before it was cool.

7)

I live with two cats not by choice.  I am more of a Dog person.  I usually had cats when I was young, but they were all indoor outdoor cats.  One was officially mine: Salt.  The brother to Pepper from Aunt Patty in Pennsylvania.  They talked a bit different, but we understood each other.  It is her pronouncing his name I hear when I think of him.  Years later her daughter would echo the sound.  

Salt was very territorial.  He just never had territory.  You might have guessed from his name he was the brighter colored of the two.  Light skinned almost glowing yellow and white.  I imagine it was hard for him to hide. Dude never caught a break.  Came home each time licking bigger and bigger wounds until one day he never returned.  We didn't really wonder what happen. Salt lost another last fight.  It would take him months to recover between them fights.  One day to return to his rehab center: under the evergreen tree next to the garage.

Pepper was small.  I never saw a scratch on her.  She lived with us in three different states.  My Dad's career took him around Lake Erie.  She gave presents clearly concerned for us.  My mother thought she would not notice the last time we moved.  We had to return for her cause she drove the neighbors crazy.  Yeah she noticed.  Old age eventually caught up with her, but nothing else was gonna.

.

Even individuals with the closest of DNA - brothers and sisters - can be completely different living completely different lives.  The most similar are the most different often.  Rooted in biology.  There is no such thing as race.  When someone so different can be more like you than someone who is supposed to be closer to you.  My five year old daughter understood this very well when we discussed this.  She knew her name..  

My cat and I left for the west coast in June and we met this buttery guy in July.  We all ended up back here cause we are cavalier here in Cleveland.  My son decided he would get a cat before he knew his roommate was allergic.  The fix is in the works.  I live with two cats not by choice making some observations.  This is what I do.  Here we are.  My cat was also supposed to go to collage last year, but we went camping instead.  Mash Potatoes lived seven life times.  Crowded at the Grand Canyon, but did not see many cats.

I was ready I thought for a few years with a cat watching me.  With two or more cats they watch each other.  They seem to think they have responsibilities.  Butter is a kitten.  The thing I love most about human babies is they do everything they can and then they sleep most of the time.  Kitten is the same.  Kittens can do many more things than human babies.  The longer the childhood is what separates us from most other animals.  

We call them domesticated, but the best is seems we can do is distract them.  Living with them has had this sympathetic vibration with my experience.  The relationship between any individuals is unique.  I may say I don't want to be you, but the truth is I can not be anything different than my own reaction to my experiences.  This goal to continue to arrive at destination.  What is external is important.  What is wrong with capitalism.  Not a fatal fault.  Seems like the modern world is angry cause the answer is so ancient: work with the seventh generation in mind.  Fixed.

The difference between cats and dogs is small

Both will curl beside you when the house grows cold

Home is only ever what we keep alive together

 

   

To Do

People don't like to be old
In all things there is good and bad
There is less to do then done

I wouldn't like to be you

There are more questions

In reality there are many answers

We fly through space upside down

Unaware

Mushrooms

 She could not speak English

But I could speak her tongue

Something shined in her eye

As she pointed to the strawberry juice

“Mushrooms!!!”  What would come in your mind

Novelty indeed

Purple Grey

The energy I could recognize
Her I could not see where she came or went

There she was in the heart of town purple and grey

Not asking for anything else

What I heard and what I saw

More people talk than dance seems a mistake

For a long time more danced