12-22-18 - Another Song of Mary

Saturday bonus - more reflection on Mary, in words she might have used...You can listen to this reflection here.

I was not reading, or sewing, as the pictures have it.
If you must know, I was finishing dressing after a morning bath, 

  my clothes scarcely fastened before this intruder stood before me, challenging my modesty.

“Do not be afraid, Mary.”
I was not afraid because I thought him an intruder.
I was afraid because I knew what he was,
  the whiff of heaven unmistakable, the light almost unbearable.

“Oh shit,” I thought.“This cannot be good. God wants something from me.”

But never in a million eternities could I have imagined what.
My very flesh, the body God himself crafted, now to be indwelled by holy presence?

And that presence to leave a residue
  that would take form as an embryo,
    then human miniature
      then – flesh, blood, shape, substance, soul, spirit?

Is this what it means to find favor with God?
Why is God turning my world upside down?

Or… could it be that God is turning the whole world upside down?
Righting all the wrongs, restoring all the rights,
lifting up the downcast, casting down the powerful?

Will the hungry be fed, and the oppressed be freed…
because of the one who will come through me?
Is this how God will fulfill the promises made to our ancestors?

Am I to be God’s promise-bearer?

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