Poems: Mary Mary

Mary Mary

It was a foolish thing for God to do. 

To choose a young girl was a foolish thing to do. 

The wise were bound to scoff and the pious pout,

for such a thing seemed most unseemly and wholly inappropriate. 

It is most out of character, most unbiblical, they would doubt.

Before, it has been the old barren women who were called and given a part in God’s special play,

old women called for the birth of leaders renown,

the legends decreed. 

The carriers of divine legacy sprung from dry seeds.

When all of birth and promise seemed nil,

age greater,

and the fertility of mother earth’s womanhood sucked barren by weariness and years,

that is when God gave the shudder of the labor and water and blood. 

As if to declare to the darkening world, itself aged and gone dry,

there is life still.

Sarah.  Hannah.  Elizabeth too. 

These old ones made mothers when unlikeliest. 

Sarah laughing with sardonic twist

at the prospect of Isaac born from the habit lovemaking of gray she and balded Abraham.  

Hannah too with her Samuel, this mother’s late hope finally birthed,

and she, giving rise to song, praises God for this pattern of incredulity and miracles to which she and her people belong.

Last we look to Elizabeth herself,

advanced in years the younger ones would politely call. 

From the worn bed shared with Zechariah,

their place of prayers and talk and warmth,

mattresses comfortably uncomfortable and familiar,

well sunken in the middle,

the old lovers drawn inevitably together through the roaming of the night. 

Yes, God makes a place for life when life seems past and purposeless. 

Weathered wombs made fruity and moist. 

A child John for saggy arms to hold. 

This kind of miracle God’s people can believe. 

Wondrous and strange and out of the blue. 

And traditional. 

The kind of miracles hungered for by a people better moved,

more easily moved,

by miracles. 

This is the way of our God, the learned fellows would say; 

averring from tailored robes,

this is the right way God behaves. 

But not young maidens.

They always give birth. 

They’re supposed to give birth. 

Fresh, elastic. 

It’s hard for them not to be fertile.

This is too reckless of God to be true. 

Too ordinary. 

Too easy. 

Nothing special this news. 

To choose a young girl to bear God’s chosen one,

a common young maid quick to conceive,

was a very foolish thing for God to do. 

How on earth, the pontificating pastors would pout

and the grim preachers would ploy,

can we prove there is anything special, anything holy,

anything grand about this newborn boy? 

“Take it on faith for once,” God replies from deep inside. 

“Where on earth should God be? 

I’m tired of the magic and making you believe through stunts, can’t you see.”

This is even more extra-ordinary than creation from the extra-ordinary. 

More special than God making God happen within the unlikely and impossible. 

More magical than the miracle.

To say yes, yes to serve. 

It is the ordinary God wants to within conceive God’s own loving self. 

Within the already fertile and potential,

the already ready, to make flesh and real the living love of the ground of being. 

By this boy,

not another thing,

but the epitome of all things. 

Heaven’s ways conceived within earth’s everyday possibilities:

Ready waiting

Ready latent

Ready rich

Ready inviting

Ready to serve and enjoy it when others are fed

Ever ready available for this way of heaven fleshing God’s way

into our years and tears,

dances and dinners,

children around the table,

friends sitting on sofas and floors,

the comfort of the familiar kindled bright by the star struck spark of divine company. 

Friends come knocking with fudge for the child dear. 

Noses reddening when cold meets fireplace flame and lips purse about Christmas cheer. 

Angels visit within gifts wrapped in garish wrapping paper,

within bows and ribbons folded and knotted by fingers chubby and clumsy,

within clothespin ornaments made of Elmer’s Glue. 

Heaven fleshing God’s way within the stuff of earth every moment renewed. 

Heaven conceiving within the common. 

Earth’s commonest places, every day’s ready wombs, arch to receive.