Was It Worth It? A Mary Meditation (Part 1)

A woman gives birth after hours that seem like days passing into night.  A friend who had been by her side throughout the ordeal looks upon her and asks was it worth it?  

The woman understands the question, yet is surprised by it, by her friend’s ignorance.  How can her friend not know?  How can she not see? 

Oh yes, she answers smiling through the pain.  Yes.  It was worth it.

The woman clutches the child to her just a little tighter, as if to protect him from all the doubts and fears that have led up to this single moment in their time.

The woman has no idea what will come for this little person entrusted to her.  But in that single instant when mother and child meet face to face for the first time, doubt and fear are replaced by the single polestar that will guide their lives together: love.

In the days turning to weeks and months and years to come . . . the long nights of worry and the days leaching into old age, the question will come back to her.  The facts of a lifetime will change, the texture of the real life of the child she bore will take the place of the life she imagined for him.  

Yet her answer remains always the same: Oh yes.  Yes.  It was worth it.

The friend’s question was driven not by mere curiosity.  It was driven by a genuine desire to know what she herself had not experienced: how could it be ‘worth it’ to go through what the woman had borne?  How could any woman desire this travesty to her body?  How was it possible that what looked to the friend like torture would produce what she saw on her friend’s face?  For where the friend saw only fear and heartache and pain, the woman saw . . . felt . . . embodied . . . joy, the joy born of love.

So it has been from the beginning of time, as women have given birth and bystanders have wondered that they would.

So it was for the woman.  So it was for Mary.

Imagine, then, Mary, not as the young woman to whom Gabriel appeared, but as an old woman having outlived her son who was publicly executed by the Roman Empire, pondering in her heart all that had happened before, being asked by strangers and friends alike whether it was worth it.

As recorded in the first chapter of Luke’s gospel, she would remember the words of the angel Gabriel, spoken to her when she was little more than a child herself:

The angel said to her, “Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God.  And now, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you will name him Jesus.  He will be great, and will be called the Son of the Most High, and the Lord God will give to him the throne of his ancestor David.  He will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end.”

An old woman now, she will remember her question to the angel – how would this be possible?  And in the face of the angel’s response:  For nothing will be impossible with God, she recalls her own words, her own blind, naive-sounding faith:   Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.

Looking at her own wrinkled hands, pondering that her son, the beloved of her heart, did not live long enough to be so marked by time, she thinks on the promise of his greatness, his ascension to David’s own throne and wonders where the never-ending kingdom went to.

She laughs at her own naivete and considers how God’s ways never look the way her people think it will.  She is gentle with her many visitors, especially with the mothers who themselves have lost sons.

She knows the cost and no words need be spoken between them as she and they simply sit together in the silence of their shared experience and sorrow.

When it is time for them, these visiting mothers of sorrow, to leave her, she takes their hands and offers her own silent blessing and comfort.

A Conversation with Mary: Contemplating the Magnificat

And Mary said . . .

I’m thinking – what on earth do I have that connects with Mary – I was never Mary – yes, I was young once, but I was never that good, that willing, that open, that sure, especially when I was young, to entertain the possibility, let alone the actual visitation, of angels.  Then I read in the footnotes that other manuscripts identify the speaker not as Mary, but as Elizabeth.  Gold.  For like Elizabeth, I am now well past my sell-by date.  Old I don’t have to remember – I’m living it.  But imagine being pregnant now?  You’ve got to be kidding me!  Seriously!  Yes, babies are blessings – but now?  No.  No.  No.  

“My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior, for he has looked with favor on the lowliness of his servant.

My soul can magnify the Lord – at least I hope so, for I know the Lord has magnified – made larger, made more – my own.  And I do rejoice.  Not enough in relation to all I have been blessed, I’ll grant.  But I do joice and re-joice – for the favor of God’s looking and saving and being and doing.  And sometimes, others join my dancing joy or I theirs, and it is magnificent and I thank God for them too – the dancing ones, for they show me the face of God I can seldom see on my own (I’m still that angel-missing gal).

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.

How I wish we knew you as Blessed Mary rather than Blessed Virgin, as if your sexual maturation (or rather its lack) is the blessed thing about you, instead of your Mary-ness, your kind goodness, your openness to the preposterous, your willingness to serve at such great cost.  I love the Pieta and I get the theology of your youth, but really – a mother holding her dead son in her arms grows old in an instant.  Blessed are you, Mary, Mother of God, for going the distance . . . for trading your youth for an eternity of sorrow . . . for his sacrifice was yours too, wasn’t it?  Every mother of every son or daughter knows it to be true.  So for all of us, thank you, Mary and thank you, God, for giving us a Mary.  Her price paid is not one to ever wish, but now done, it is received with such gratitude.

His mercy is for those who fear him from generation to generation.

. . . for those . . . who?  From generation to generation – I’m guessing that means a people whole and not merely a collection of individuals.  But for those who fear?  What am I to do with that, coming from the mouth of the mother whose son’s most frequent command was that we “fear not”?  Maybe fear means awe or reverence or respect.  While I suspect that’s probably true, I still don’t know quite what to do with that, because the word ‘fear’ is so freighted in my time – carrying as it does the weight of so very many things and people to be afraid of.  Am I to fear God like I fear the Hitlers of the world or the baby Hitlers who so happily dwell within me?  Let it not be so.  The very mercy of the mercy seat is what allows me to come to You, Lord, joicing and re-joicing rather than trembling.  So totally Other, of course I fear the all-of-You.  How could I not?  But You have, in that very mercy, bade me welcome, and fear has turned its head as the confidence of a beloved child approaching the Giantess of a mother takes root within me.  Fear?  Ah, Mary, what are we to do with that?

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.

I love this vision . . . until I remember that I am rich.  I adore this promise . . . until I remember that I am proud.  I treasure this inevitability . . . until I remember that I, too, am powerful.  Now do I begin to understand the fear of the Lord.  And I tremble . . . like Jefferson, I tremble when I recall that You, Lord, are just.

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 forever.”

How, Mary, did you become spokesperson for a nation, for a people, for a world?  How was your vision so large that you could see a nation in the thought of an idea of a promise that is a baby first formed?  And which promise, exactly?  It sounds so king-like, so grand, doesn’t it?  But where’s the proof?  We’re two thousand years or so on and still we wait, still we wonder, still we doubt.  So where’s the proof?  There is no north star, no magi, no manger, save in our imaginings, for us.  Paul’s the best we’ve got – our faith actually is the proof.  But sometimes, that grows a bit thin, now, doesn’t it?  Off my high horse, I contemplate you beholding your son, dead from a cross, and know you saw the face of the baby you once held in your arms.  But I wonder, when you held the baby, did you see the son dead from a cross?  It wasn’t any easier for you than for us, was it?  No – it was much, much harder.  I am so sorry for your loss and more than a bit guilty that it was my gain.  From one mother to another, I am just so sorry.