Tomorrow I will get back to blogging about teaching and commuting with a stray post about seminary classes. I realize that I wrote about a feast day yesterday, but there's another one today, the Feast Day of the Annunciation, which celebrates the day the angel Gabriel visited Mary to tell her that God had a vision for her and for the salvation of the world and invited her to play a huge role. She asked a question or two and then said yes.
I've spent much of my life thinking about this pivotal moment. In my early years, I thought about consent. In my childhood years, we didn't think much about consent as we discussed this story; we thought about the honor of being chosen. In my teenage years, I thought about the burden of being the mother of the messiah. I thought about consent--was God a rapist?
I have since decided that Mary could have said no, which made me think about other women who might have said no along the way. Was Mary God's first choice? I've also thought about modernizing the story, which is a typical approach of mine.
Here's a poem I wrote some years ago now. (for more process notes, see this blog post), which was included in the book Annunciation:
A Girl More Worthy
The angel Gabriel rolls his eyes
at his latest assignment:
a virgin in Miami?
Can such a creature exist?
He goes to the beaches, the design
districts, the glittering buildings
at every boundary.
Just to cover all bases, he checks
the churches but finds no
vessels for the holy inside.
He thinks he’s found her in the developer’s
office, when she offers him coffee, a kind
smile, and a square of cake. But then she instructs
him in how to trick the regulatory
authorities, how to make his income and assets
seem bigger so that he can qualify
for a huge mortgage that he can never repay.
On his way out of town, he thinks he spies
John the Baptist under the Interstate
flyway that takes tourists
to the shore. But so many mutter
about broods of vipers and lost
generations that it’s hard to tell
the prophet from the grump,
the lunatic from the T.V. commentator.
Finally, at the commuter college,
that cradle of the community,
he finds her. He no longer hails
moderns with the standard angel
greetings. Unlike the ancients,
they are not afraid, or perhaps, their fears
are just so different now.
The angel Gabriel says a silent benediction
and then outlines God’s plan.
Mary wonders why Gabriel didn’t go
to Harvard where he might find
a girl more worthy. What has she done
to find God’s favor?
She has submitted
to many a will greater than her own.
Despite a lifetime’s experience
of closed doors and the word no,
she says yes.
It's a topic I return to again and again, a question I continue to have. What relevance does this Bible story have to our modern lives? I am thinking of a nap I took years ago, when I woke up and looked at a palm tree, and a poem came to me. I took this picture of the tree:
Look at the two browner fronds at the bottom, closest to the trunk--don't they look like a pair of wings? That musing led to this poem:
In the early hours of this feast
day of the Annunciation, I listen
for God’s invitation, but all I hear
is the roar of a motorcycle speeding
away after last call. The rustle
of the palm fronds in the wind,
the only angel wings today,
as I lay enfolded in the arms
of my beloved of thirty years.
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