The Visitation: Mary Laughed

 "The Windsock Visitation" by Brother Michael O'Neil McGrath

“The Windsock Visitation” by Brother Michael O’Neill McGrath - See more at: http://www.catholic-sf.org/news_select.php&newsid=27&id=58007/printer_friendly.php?id=59819#sthash.PmjJu5C7.dpuf

And Mary said,
‘My soul magnifies the Lord,
   and my spirit rejoices in God my Saviour,
for he has looked with favour on the lowliness of his servant.
   Surely, from now on all generations will call me blessed;
for the Mighty One has done great things for me,
   and holy is his name.
His mercy is for those who fear him
   from generation to generation.
He has shown strength with his arm;
   he has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts.
He has brought down the powerful from their thrones,
   and lifted up the lowly;
he has filled the hungry with good things,
   and sent the rich away empty.
He has helped his servant Israel,
   in remembrance of his mercy,
according to the promise he made to our ancestors,
   to Abraham and to his descendants for ever.’ 
                                         - Luke 1:46-55 

From the moment the angel arrived, 

despite assurances, a small seed of fear 
planted itself at the base of her throat. 
Longing and love enabled her to speak 
a few short words around it and in their wake 
“the thing with feathers/ that perches in the soul” 
alighted in her breast and there the two 
abode together – fear and hope – 
at times, the one winning out, at times, the other.  

Who’s to say which aided her more 

as her feet hurried along the path 
to Elizabeth’s house – the fear that pressed 
her from behind, or hope that drew 
her like a flame?  

It was the sight of Elizabeth, 

that wizened woman leaping 
with effort to her feet, the great, 
round belly swaying its way 
toward Mary, that broke the tie.  

Mary laughed, a short, sharp 
bark that burst past the fear 
dislodging it forever from her throat, 
like a watermelon seed 
spit on a summer's afternoon.  

She laughed, like Sarah, the sound growing 
as her lips spread wide, white teeth and red tongue 
baring and Elizabeth, catching the glimmer 
in Mary’s eye, began to sing and sway 
in a strange dance, made absurd 
by her enormous girth and ripening old age.  
Mary giggled, like the young girl she was, 
like someone who had nothing left to lose 
and everything to gain.  

The old woman grasped Mary 
by the hand, her own face, 
her eyes, spread wide by joy and wonder.  
This is when, the story goes, young 
John leaped his famous leap, but it’s also 
the moment in which the thing with feathers 
sprouted wings and sprung from Mary’s soul – 
hope flew up her throat, past the red parted lips, 
bursting into a song that could not be suppressed. 

Mary’s words danced their way over and between them
as they swayed and spun together, two bodies 
met in expectancy, one young, one old. 
Once the song found wings it was irrepressible;
the words and tune, the strange swaying steps 
carried her, always, along the long, dark path ahead.
 
I'm journeying with John D. Blase and Winn Collier to write on a lectionary text each Monday of Advent.  The truth of the 'word made flesh' is that words touch us each in different ways, in different places.  Visit their blogs, The Beautiful Due and WinnCollier.com to read another perspective on this passage.  

Joining with the communities at Playdates with God and Unforced Rhythms.

A Prayer for Wonder

We stayed out later than normal and as I carried forty pounds of three year old through the cold, dark night toward the waiting van, he happened to look up. 

“The moon is so little!” he cried. 

I tipped my chin toward heaven and saw stars winking their diamond light, but no moon in sight.

“Does the moon get that little every night?” he marveled.

“No, Levi,” I said, “those are stars.”

He’s seen the moon large, flat and silver hanging low and shining through his bedroom window at night, but you have to be outside to see the stars.  I tried to imagine what it must seem like to him, as though a giant hammer shattered the moon and sent it flying across a canvas of black, a million shimmering slivers of light. 

//

“Go outside and look at the stars,” God told Abraham.  “Try to count them if you can.”

“Where is the king?” the wise men asked, “We have seen his star and have come to worship him.”

“You will shine like stars,” Paul tells the people of Phillipi. 

//

How often do I fail to look up, to set my eyes toward the wonder of all that shines in heaven and on earth?

//

Last winter we stood in a freezing field of evergreens as darkness descended, determined to cut our own tree despite the inconvenience.  Mittened and booted, the kids and I huddled around the van while my husband worked the hand saw back and forth against the still living tree. 

Standing in the field, out far beyond his bedtime, my one son was overwhelmed by the dark.  Tucking his mittened hand into my own he turned his chubby face up and it shone, round and full like the moon.   “Santa up there,” he said in a voice filled with a mixture of utter certainty and awe. 

I was surprised, we don’t really do much with Santa at our house and although he missed the mark theologically, in that wide darkness my little boy knew something holy and wonderful was afoot.  His very being embodied wonder as he gazed upward.  In that moment he was not so different from the wise men who couldn’t fully grasp the meaning of the star, but knew wonder, knew light, when they saw it.    

//

Tied to the roof of the van, the tree followed us home to a dark little apartment where we strung it with lights, bringing a faint echo of the glimmering starlight inside with us for a season.  Those lights hung between needles of green lit the room gently in the evenings - quieting us, calling our hearts, our minds, to wonder, as though God might whisper in the darkness, “Look at the lights, try to count them if you can.”

//

Where are you looking these days?  

The world we live in holds enough darkness to overwhelm us all, darkness both deep and wide.  The good news of John’s gospel, though, begins with a simple affirmation - “the light shines in the darkness and the darkness has not overcome it.” 

There is a Light that shines among us and we are called not to deny the darkness, but to look for the Light in the very midst of it.

God of heaven and earth, teach us to look up, 
to look out beyond our small selves, our small ideas.   

Cultivate in us the eyes of a child – 
eyes of wonder, awe and belief.  

Let us stand unafraid in the dark, our faces lifted in wonder, 
seeking the light that’s both already and yet to come.   

Then we, with faces round and full like the moon, 
will shine like stars, like light scattered far and wide against the night.    

May You Know Discomfort (An Advent Blessing)

 

Comfort, O comfort my people, says your God. - Isaiah 40:1
 
There's a comfort
that enshrouds the living
in the illusion of safety,
swaddled in excess, removed
from exposure, bundled
like that boy in A Christmas Story,
unable to move or effect much at all;
a comfort that leads to sleep that is a living
death.

Then, also, there is the comfort
that comes as a balm, soothing ointment
spread across the gaping wound.  Comfort
like a gentle voice that knows your name and speaks
it even in the storm of anxiety and fear.  Comfort
that sees your sin for what it is and bears its cost
like a weight lifted from your back.  Comfort like water
for the thirsty, bread for the hungry, rest for the weary,
freedom for the oppressed.  Comfort that restores fullness of
life.

The difference,
lies in the willingness
to be disturbed,
exposed,
vulnerable,
and weak.

May you know thirst and hunger this Advent.

May you feel the raw winds of exposure, the ache
of your own depletion.

May the darkness of this world
overwhelm you, laying bare the illusions of all that is false
within and around you.

May the emptiness, loneliness and longing
that is spaciousness and freedom rise up around you until
you're able to hear the words of the prophet as they were spoken.

May you know discomfort that you might receive with joy,
the God of all Comfort. 

This post is linked with Playdates with God.
 

Comfort (Advent Week 2)

An American soldier is comforted after learning of the death of his friend.  

Korean War 1950

Comfort, O comfort my people,
   says your God.  

Speak tenderly to Jerusalem,
   and cry to her
that she has served her term,
   that her penalty is paid,
that she has received from the Lord’s hand
   double for all her sins.

A voice cries out:
‘In the wilderness prepare the way of the Lord,
   make straight in the desert a highway for our God.
Every valley shall be lifted up,
   and every mountain and hill be made low;
the uneven ground shall become level,
   and the rough places a plain.
Then the glory of the Lord shall be revealed,
   and all people shall see it together,
   for the mouth of the Lord has spoken.’

A voice says, ‘Cry out!’
   And I said, ‘What shall I cry?’
All people are grass,
   their constancy is like the flower of the field.
The grass withers, the flower fades,
   when the breath of the Lord blows upon it;
   surely the people are grass.
The grass withers, the flower fades;
   but the word of our God will stand for ever.
Get you up to a high mountain,
   O Zion, herald of good tidings;
lift up your voice with strength,
   O Jerusalem, herald of good tidings,
   lift it up, do not fear;
say to the cities of Judah,
   ‘Here is your God!’
See, the Lord God comes with might,
   and his arm rules for him;
his reward is with him,
   and his recompense before him.
He will feed his flock like a shepherd;
   he will gather the lambs in his arms,
and carry them in his bosom,
   and gently lead the mother sheep. 
                          - Isaiah 40:1-11 

“I can’t sleep,” I would say, turning to my husband in the early years of our marriage.  

Half asleep, he would raise one arm and gently caress my hair, his hand warm and calm.  

“Noni-noni,” he sang, a simple song of three notes that repeated over and over and the simplicity of touch, of repetition and love fell like a blanket over me, a tender comfort that held me to the present enabling me to pass through the small, dim doorway to sleep unafraid.  

//  

When the twins were coming my husband stood at my side and repeated the words of Julian of Norwich over and over again, “All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well.”  This, in front of the four nurses, midwife and two doctors, the anesthesiologist and doula who crowded the room.   

Eyes locked on his, I listened and breathed into the unknown, relaxing my body to make way for new life.  

“All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well.”  

Baby A came so quickly like a match bursting into flame and Baby B was wrestled feet first into the light and I could not stop bleeding and my husband was so simultaneously exhausted and thrilled.  

I lay awake all night, in pain, in fear until the angel came in the morning in the form of a nurse full of bustle and command.  “Do not be afraid,” she said, “you won’t need surgery.  You’re going to be ok, let’s try to get you sitting up.”  

Weeks later I did need surgery, but the angel’s words and the words of Julian of Norwich carried us, carried me, like the shepherd who gathers the lambs, who gently leads the mother sheep.  

//  

The panic attacks came fast and furious like the longest, hardest labor I’ve ever known, wave after wave of fear and anxiety that cut me off from my own center, from the ability to relax and surrender.  My husband’s body offered a tangible comfort as I leaned back in his arms, his flesh connecting me somehow to the present which I felt otherwise unable to access. 

When the worst was past I lay in bed fearful but exhausted, desperate to rest, and he sat beside me stroking my head, my arms, offering comfort as one would to a trapped and wounded animal.  

Eventually I asked him to repeat this phrase, “You are floating in a sea of love,” and he did so over and over as I drifted, finally, into a shallow peace. 

//

“Comfort, O comfort my people,” God told Isaiah, "Speak tenderly, that the worst has passed."  

Yet work was still to be done – the making way for the One – the great upheaval that precedes all new life.  In the midst of this, the prophet Isaiah murmurs like a husband to fearful Israel and the pain of the present agony is placed in the context of God’s constancy, the presence that does not wither or fade.  

This tender comfort is what allows Israel to lift her weary head, to look up, climb up to the heights and find her voice returned with the renewed strength of one who has passed through the night and survived. 

//

“Do not be afraid,” the angel tells us at Advent; tells Zechariah, Mary and the shepherds.  

“Comfort, O Comfort,” Isaiah is told.  

And these words of tenderness fall upon our weary heads like a warm and gentle hand.  

//  

Christ has come and yet the tumult continues as the whole world trembles in labor for the kingdom which is already and not yet.  And we, Christ’s followers, must go like Isaiah, to the rough, desert places of fear and pain, must offer our hands, our whispering voices to carry each other through the night.  

“Do not be afraid.”  

“All shall be well.”  

“Lift up your voices,” the Lord has come and is coming still.

I'm grateful to be joining with authors Winn Collier and John D. Blase to reflect on a lectionary reading for each week of Advent. Stop by their websites for another angle on Isaiah's text - Winn is pastor of All Souls Church in Charlottesville, VA and John is a poet and author of the beautiful book, Touching Wonder: Recapturing the Awe of Christmas.

This post is also linked with the Unforced Rhythms community.

When God Comes Down (Advent Week One)

This Advent season I'm excited to be joining John D. Blase and Win Collier in writing weekly reflections based on a passage from each week's lectionary texts.  Every Monday we'll each be posting our own take on the passage at hand and I encourage you to visit their sites as each of us explores the passage from a different angle.  This week's reading, in full, is Isaiah 64:1-9.

 

O that you would tear open the heavens and come down,

so that the mountains would quake at your presence –

as when fire kindles brushwood and the fire causes water to boil -  (Isaiah 64:1-2a)

In the final days of summer, the twins and I played in the grassy field beside our house, chasing, tackling, falling and laughing until, finally, in need of a break, I stretched out on the ground underneath the giant maple tree.  The boys, still ready for rough-housing, continued to climb and jump on me. 

In an effort to distract them, I told them to lay on their backs. 

We three lay in a row looking up at the leaves and glimmers of blue sky beyond. 

“Stretch your arms up,” I said, “Can you reach the leaves?”

Six arms expanded upward, but even my long limbs fell short of the task.  Lying on our backs we were dwarfed by the world, by the distance between heaven and earth.

“Me can reach 'berry high,” my one boy observed, “but me not reach all the way to the sky.”

//

The weather was uniformly beautiful during the week I spent as a patient in the psychiatric hospital.  Mid-August in Central PA is typically hot, humid and hazy, but that week the air was fresh, almost crisp, and the sky was the brightest, clearest blue you can imagine. 

Every day, twice a day, patients who didn’t pose a risk to themselves or others could board the elevator and travel down two floors to a basement room.  There a double glass doorway led out to a small, grassy courtyard that bore an uncanny resemblance to a prison yard, complete with a small basketball court and fencing topped with spirals of barbed wire. 

Going outside was a privilege, a chance to breathe fresh air, to feel the sun on your face and arms and, equally importantly, to escape the chaos of the unit.

Toward the end of my hospitalization, when the unit itself became most stressful, I treasured those moments in the sun.  Most patients sat on benches or paced the small enclosure like restless lions at the zoo, but I felt the earth drawing me like a magnet and finally took to laying flat-out on the green grass, feeling the cool, solid earth beneath me, holding me steady while the sun worked its fingers of light across my back. 

//

The presence of God, biblically speaking, is a force powerful enough to cause the mountains and the earth itself to tremble.  When God is on the move the whole earth shakes, the foundations of the world teetering like bowling pins about to topple.

This is not typically how we like to think of God’s movement in our lives, our contemporary god to whom we pray fervently for comfort and safety, for smooth sailing across calm seas.   

This summer I felt the earth of my soul move in ways I knew were necessary, but the experience itself was terrifying.  Suddenly I recognized a hint of desperation in the Pslamist’s cries, “Where can I flee from your presence, O God?”

//

There are times in life when our world is so shaken that the only comfort, the only sensible thing to do is to get down low, to kneel, to lay, stretched out on the only solid thing we can find – the earth that was made for us, that holds us through our daily rounds of exultation and defeat. 

Lowered from the lofty heights of our own initiative, we’re rendered useless.  Lying on our backs we find the invitation to surrender control, to relax, held as we were in birth, prone as we will be in death.

We can reach “berry high” but we cannot touch the sky and, in the assurance of the earth’s embrace our limited potential is not a threat, but a comfort.  As Isaiah says, it’s God who must come down among us, God whose fierce strength and determination rends the great divide sending out shock-waves that echo through the very heart of heaven and earth. 

Maybe this is exactly what we need – not what we want, but what we need – a good shaking up, the feeling of uncomfortable heat on our backsides, a jolt of change profound enough to break us loose from the sins and ties that bind.    

This is where Advent begins, with the trembling, quaking, tearing force of One drawn to us by love.  So let us, if we are wise, throw ourselves to the ground, acknowledging the distance, returning to our place in the proper order of things, undone and expectant in anticipation of the God who came down and continues to dwell among us in ways both unsettling and liberating.

This post is also linked with the Unforced Rhythms community and Laura Boggess' Playdates with God.

Photo Source.