Scripture: Luke 2:1-20 Sermon: Loveday By Sarah Zwickle Following the sermon text are other letters that Sarah wrote to Mary during October, November, and December.
Yes! Welcome! It’s wonderful to see you this morning! Everyone, come on in to the Zwickle house in Michigan! One of the unexpected intimacies of a virtual meeting is that we can share Christmas morning together from our living rooms! Here is a brief glimpse of ours…. I’m really grateful to be here with all of you, to share a slice of this day.
So, what or who were you expecting today? If you haven’t been reading Gwen’s emails, you probably were not expecting me! And everything about the scripture today was unexpected. The breaking news given to shepherds, in a field, by a massive angel choir? The Messiah a baby? And in a manger? As shepherds bust into the inn to see and to shout in wonder and amazement while Mary attempts to breast feed for the first time, what is firing in the connections between her mind and your heart? What constellations of understanding are just now blossoming in her consciousness, as she treasured up words and pondered them and counted the breaths of Love just born?
I’m getting ahead of myself a little. As we worked out who would inhabit the different women, it happened that I got Mary on Christmas Day, of all days! Today is the day, the birth-day, the origin story, the inspiration for thousands of pictures and statutes of Mary pondering all over lawns and churches and homes, but not one of them includes a speech bubble of her inner thoughts. My first thought about reflecting on Mary was that I “should” know her better than I did. In my imagination, Mary always held a kind of distant, elevated position, an example of motherly perfection and virtue. Joel wisely pointed out that should is a bummer of a place to start a relationship with someone, so what could I do? How do you get to know a woman from 2,000 years ago, better? First, read the stories about her. But I still wasn’t quite getting there, so I decided to write her letters. I’ve posted some online, if you want to read a few of them, but I want to share the one I wrote for today…
December 25, 2022:
Dear Mary,
What were you thinking?
I should tell you, there are a lot of assumptions about your virtues, Mary: gracious, humble, obedient, but I’m no longer satisfied with this. Not after 9 months of carrying a child out of wedlock, putting you on the edge of society, just like Rahab. Not after, in your first trimester, walking for miles, as Ruth did, to see Elizabeth, and while you were there proclaiming the goodness of G-d and naming the hunger and suffering, as Naomi did. You proclaim that this birth means the promise and fulfillment of new life, in the same way a birth meant new life for Tamar through her own kind of trickstery immaculate conception.
You were visited by an angel, you spoke powerful poetry, you traveled for miles, you were so young, you were open to creative mystery, and, despite all of the silent nativity scenes we have today, I’m guessing the nativity wasn’t silent or still, was it? Joanna Harader, who wrote the book me and several people in our church have been following these last few weeks, described the scene as a mess of physical exhaustion, emotional ups and downs. By the end of last night, you completed a completely unexpected journey while pregnant, probably had contractions on the back of a donkey. You were tired, hungry, thirsty, and relieved to find a place to rest, even if it wasn’t an ideal place for giving birth. Another birth plan out the window. But you did give birth! And congratulations by the way!
In all of the chaos and noise following, how are you able to find a way to treasure and ponder now? What were you thinking? I won’t get your answer for a while, so maybe this is the time to tell you that story I promised a couple weeks ago, about a cow.
Loveday was her name, a Jersey with the longest, most luxurious eyelashes and the softest, deepest brown eyes. (show pic). These features were topped off with a charming spray of long brown hair just between her ears. She was beautiful, and she was strong-willed. She did not come when called to come in for milking. Nor did she go when it was time for her to mate with an eligible bull. She stayed in her own pasture, and completely ignored the stud one field over for days. Then, when everyone had given up and the gate was closed, a drizzly day, under a magnificent rainbow, that was the day Loveday got through the fence and decided it was time. Her calf Bow was born just over nine months later, another kind of nativity, cow and calf, a rainbow instead of a manger, but before that, she taught me something about Love. Here’s how it went.
It was late summer, I was in my mid-twenties, and I was walking down the footpath through the pasture where I could collapse in bed. It was just before sunset. I was bone tired after a week of hay harvest on top of the everyday work. The path was beaten down by years of organic farm interns before, and there was Loveday, a very pregnant Loveday, laying right across my well-worn path. Two front hooves tucked under just so and two back legs splayed out to the sides of her ample belly, tail thumping the dust, mouth chewing lazily, and the smell of warm clover wafting off her back.
It’s almost like she knew I needed to stop, that it was time to end a long, emotionally and spiritually exhausting journey to find love, to find G-d, somewhere outside of myself. Up until that day, I always thought I could earn love if I worked for others, said the right things, felt the right way, made the right choices. I was expecting G-d to show up, to break through the forest, at every turn in my path until then, but it never happened, and I was sad and confused and tired.
I was so, so tired, and Loveday was so, so warm and close and different. In a kind of daze, I accepted her bovine invitation and sat down next to her and laid my head on her swollen belly that held her unborn calf. She let me lie there for a while, skin to hide, and my breath began to match her breath. Her belly went up and down, my breath went in and out. I was completely in the presence of this massive, pregnant, independent, earthly ruminant.
Stillness. No talking. No judgement or expectations. Only presence. I surrendered, an empty vessel, and inside that void a spark fired, and I felt warmth, gratitude, love.
It was the beginning of a new realization that love was not outside to earn, but inside, waiting for room to grow, stardust remembering its birth story, electricity searching for connection. My expectations began to splinter like dry kindling, leaving room to spark love and joy, like planting a seed or creating art or music or friendship or family, effort giving way to grace, to unexpected, overwhelming love that has been there all along, not earned by any outward goals or progress or check marks, simply what is when we stop.
Suddenly, Loveday heaved and rocked upright, and to my utter (udder?) surprise, began to prance a little on the path. The light was just about gone, but Loveday lifted her front hooves a little higher and she danced, her giant belly swaying to and fro in dusky delight. I laughed and cringed a little at her exuberant undulation. She should have been in her own paddock by then. Instead, she lingered in the fading rays of a star and danced her way back through the open gate in her own time. I closed it behind her, a container of joy. Loveday.
Joanna Haradar describes your pondering as an inner calm, a moment of spaciousness, a place where the critical mass of treasured experiences and words lies stacked up, and if you breathe into them, spontaneous gratitude ignites and CRACKLE. Wonder. Joy. Transformation. Love.
Can I be so bold as to guess, Mary, that you weren’t thinking at all, you were just present? Suddenly grounded by spontaneous love, born into the world, into all of our tender humanness, connecting angel, shepherd, cow, newborn, G-d, into one beautiful nativity, delivered to us from the inside out, incarnate. There are no words to say, only to treasure. Words are the expression of love as a force in the world, the breath and action of love made manifest in sounds we make, in voices uplifted, but where that comes from was just born a baby. That is overtaking Mary at this moment, and she is breathing into it, the breath we all come back to.
When we give birth, we must breathe. When we meditate, we breathe. When we run, sing, and dance our breath intermingles with the world around us, animals, plants, humans, and we are alive and connected even if we do not say it out loud. Even if we just breathe.
A breath for each woman, Tamar, Rahab, Ruth and Naomi, Bathsheba, Mary, Anna, Weeping Mothers and Wisdom. One for each woman in your life that has traveled with you, generations before and will travel on generations after. One for the creatives and loves inside of you, ribbons of suffering and joy, pain and elation, proclamation and meditation, shouts and silences, waiting to be born.
Dearest Mary, after these last few weeks of advent, many of us have stopped here with you, exhausted, hungry, and thirsty. We might not have arrived with everyone that we started with and grieve. We may have picked up new companions along the way and are joyful. Advent’s path is well worn for some of us and completely new for others, but here we are, part of a remarkable journey that began a long, long time ago, the migration towards starlight, marked by magnetism, followed by geese and whales and camels. It is a journey through joy, prophecy, pain, and expectation to suddenly find you still, counting the breaths of Love just born.
Thank you for being still in the midst of clamor, for reminding us to sit a while and savor each lovely day, each beautiful breath.
Thank you, and Happy Loveday.
Love,
Sarah
P.S. To the congregation: On this Loveday, if you can, let go of expectation for a minute or two and see what comes up. Maybe you will be surprised by gratitude, by joy. Maybe you will fall asleep. Maybe you will dance. And if nothing comes up, that’s okay, try taking three breaths together with a child, a partner, a pet, a friend, a treasured memory, an ancestor, or a tree, and may Love find you present, still.
Letters to Mary from Sarah
October 21, 2022:
Dear Mary,
Joel said “should” is a crappy place to start a relationship, so instead of shoulding, I am writing. I am writing letters to you.
So, let me start again. Hello! My name is Sarah Zwickle, and you can expect a few more letters from me over the next few weeks. It’s not fan mail. Do you get a lot of that? No, it’s more personal than that. To put it plainly, I’d like to get to know you better.
You’re probably wondering, who am I and why am I writing to you. I was asked to say a few things about you on Christmas day, of all days! Right now, I feel about you the same way I felt about Jane Austen when I was in college. Have you read her books? As an English literature major there was an unspoken expectation that we know her books inside and out, all the drama, all the social classes and cast of characters. I had never read a single one.
I admit, I have felt similar in my Christian life towards you. A kind of unspoken expectation to know you already, inside and out, your words, your piety, your obedience to G-d, your humbleness, and grace. Your virtues. To be honest, I did not think about you very much. I’ve seen you, or images of you, many times. The statue of you in the wall of St. Mary’s church in San Francisco, in two-dimensional stained glass, on Christmas album covers, and the most ubiquitous, in nativity scenes at Christmas, a pious look on your downturned face, hands crossed over your heart. I even played you once! At the Christmas Eve children’s service at CMC, Adam was Joseph, and Ashlynn, two months old, was Jesus.
Sometimes being expected to know someone erects a kind of barrier between them, a pretend relationship with a solid façade and hollow center, like those chocolate bunnies at Easter.
I skipped over Pride and Prejudice, ironically, the two things keeping me from getting to know you better. I just didn’t think you were accessible. There was no way to you. No path of vulnerability. I never imagined what you might be feeling or thinking.
Until next time,
Sarah
October 28, 2022:
Dear Mary,
What in the world were you thinking? When the angel came and said you were going to be pregnant by G-d with the Son of G-d?
The first time we met, you were being visited by an angel. I’ve been reading a book about women in Jesus’ lineage, beautiful, powerful, compassionate, and smart women, by Joanna Harader. She’s a Mennonite pastor imagining your encounter with Gabriel, and she is struck by your first question to the angel, “But how is that possible?” Ha! What a question to ask! I think a lot of us forget that you asked this. We often skip to the next part, figuring that you accepted the deal without hesitation, but not without asking how this whole thing is going to work biologically. Did you already know how two humans came together in love and wondered if G-d would come to you in the same way? Or did you not know and wanted to hear it straight from an angel’s mouth? You are protective of your body, your personhood, curious, and despite the intensity and otherworldliness of this encounter, you ask one of the most worldly and human questions possible. And…how will I become pregnant?
Joanna Harader thinks the angel was flustered, kind of hemming and hawing his way through an answer, which is funny. So, in the end, you don’t really know anyway, and still, you say yes.
When I was your age, I thought I had to earn people’s respect, admiration, and yes, love. I thought that I had to outperform, outrun, go the extra mile to be noticed, to be chosen for the team, to go to the party, to get on the homecoming court. Maybe you felt a tiny bit of that, like why, G-d, did you choose me? What did I do? Kinda like the biggest caretaking request EVER. The generosity and kindness, the love required to do that is overwhelming to me. And yet, there are women who do this, bring children into the world for others, to be loved and raised by others. It is such an unselfish act, completely giving over to love. From love to more love.
I have more questions for you, but it can wait until next week.
Sincerely,
Sarah
November 1, 2022:
Dear Mary,
This is maybe too personal, but I’m going to be brave. I’d like to know. What did you say to your husband about it? How did you speak this miraculous, shattering news to him? Is that why you left to be on your own for a while? To proclaim, to sing the truth, the more than human effects of love, so it radiated strength and clarity? To center yourself among a trusted friend before returning, this time with a belly bump? You blessed and were blessed, then returned to everyday life.
Maybe you didn’t have a PowerPoint for why, how, when this was going to happen. The two of you accepted it, and Joseph, by staying with you, said everything. Partners, travelers, mysteries.
There have been times in my marriage when Adam and I needed to have hard conversations. Ones I thought would devastate us, our connection to each other, our life together. It seemed the things I had to say to him would hurt him too much, but at the same time, they were honest. After a couple of years of marriage counseling (of course, you didn’t’ have that much time!), Adam and I still loved each other, and I realized that it hurt more to not have the conversations. That I could trust him, and me, to listen and speak with respect and tenderness, with a genuine longing to know each other, to hold each other’s questions and hurts and loves. But gosh it’s scary at first, like a fireball in your mouth that I was afraid would just destroy everything.
You know something about firey words, though, don’t you? Magnificent, beautiful, words of fire.
Sincerely,
Sarah
November 5, 2022:
Dear Mary,
Sometimes I am seized with anxiety, and sometimes that becomes depression. Usually about things that seem small afterward. The chemicals off-gassing from our new carpet, even though we bought the low VOC kind. Will it harm my two daughters, their future estrogen cycles? COVID--about getting it and much more about passing it on to others who are vulnerable. A tick bite I got last week that is not healing. New stains in the new carpet. These fears, these everyday human pangs.
Do you worry about these things during pregnancy? I always viewed you as one who was completely trusting, had no doubts, no worries, even though what you were asked to do was monumental and even dangerous. And still you said yes.
What gave you this confidence to step into G-d’s unknown plan? Who were your parents and grandparents? Who were your brothers and sisters? Did they teach you what pregnancy and birth were like, how to midwife, what to expect? Had you already raised your brothers and sisters, already been part of a community to teach you how to swaddle and breastfeed and rock a baby to sleep?
I admit, I’ve been jealous of you, Mary. Jealous of the certainty, the trust, the faith you had in G-d. I mean, you will give birth to G-d’s son. You are the Mother, holy Mary, Mother of G-d, Hail Mary Full of Grace, but that you has always been unreachable to me. Not present.
I feel as if I’m writing across gaps: space, time, age, culture, connection. You are so young, and I am done having kids. You are a teenager, and I am past 46. But letters, words, stories, bring time, past, present, and future into one moment. Bible stories are so concise, so adept at capturing important moments, Magnificent. Magnificat. Magnified, like fireflies in a jar, to marvel at, but often out of context.
2,000 years ago was such a lot for me to grasp, and it still is. But in larger time, it is nothing, we are neighbors, we are sisters, we are women. And yet, there are gulfs in technology and changes to our environment that we experience that you would have a hard time grasping. There are thin moments of interaction with the more than human world that you experience that I have a hard time grasping now.
How did you do it, Mary? How did you ignore all of the jeers and passive aggressive side comments, (which I’m sure Jane Austen had plenty of in her lifetime and in her books)? How did you find your voice, stand your ground? What deeper truth did you know that you held onto? What was the Ace up your sleeve?
I’ve yearned for an Ace up my sleeve. Some kind of grounded, secret knowledge that you keep hidden, and that, no matter what, keeps your emotions and your feelings and your hope alive inside. Like a warm cookie feeling in your stomach, you know what you just ate, what you are, even though this person hurting you might not, even though the environment is hurting, and it still tastes so good and warm and chocolatey and there’s nothing else that matters. You are deliciously, completely, centered and still on the inside.
I think part of the answer might be community, family, friends. Ancestors past, present, and future. We are not alone. This is something I’ve been pondering, even when we think we are alone. I am writing this letter to you, and I am alone at my desk, but I am not. I am thinking of all the people, all the love in the world, because there is a connection from me to you in these letters, across time and space, across culture and earth, across age and family, a Biblical tesseract.
More later,
Sarah
November 12, 2022:
Dear Mary,
I am astonished by you in these ways:
One minute you are speaking poetry so powerful and radical to Elizabeth it knocks the wind out of me. Words that will ring like a bell throughout time and history all the way to me, two thousand years later!
The next minute, the minutes right after birth, after pushing and sweating and screaming your animal self to bring life into the world, you are silent. You are exhausted, definitely, but also silent. The calm after all the incredible, inhuman effort. Was your voice hoarse from the exertion made audible?
There are times to speak out, to not be silent.
I remember when I finally gave myself permission to yell and scream during birth. The first time around, I tried to do it silently, which now I see was consistent with my family’s ways of being—to not give voice to pain and hurt, to stoically and patiently bear the pain without disrupting, without burdening anyone else with it. This was how to be strong, to bear it alone. But the second time, something shifted. Was it that I was just too tired? No, it was a yoga class and conversations with someone in my congregation, a midwife (thank you, Jennifer!) who loaned me a book and suddenly I realized that I could voice my pain, my hurt, my effort, honestly, and others would not suddenly run away or think less of me. I could have a voice, I could cause ripples, I could expose my deep, animal, woman-full self. Ah, so much easier to get through contractions!
When do we speak, and when do we ponder? When do we work, and when do we rest?
Sincerely,
Sarah
November 25, 2022:
Dear Mary,
Today, a month before your own son’s birth, is my birthday. I’m 46.
In the spirit of being 46 and not caring as much what is right or proper according to social norms, let’s break the bag of waters, let’s break open the narrative and look for meaning in the gaps.
When I was born, the umbilical cord was wrapped around my neck, and I was quickly sent away to be rescued by machines and doctors.
When I gave birth to my first daughter, it happened to her, but the doctor did a kind of Celtic knot move to undo it, and she remained breathing and whole and soon sleeping on my chest.
I was prepared to handle my own pain, in birth giving, in life, but I wasn’t prepared to witness my child’s pains, to see her in discomfort. I often want to erase it for both of my daughters, their pain and discomfort, but then I remember that rather than take it, it is good to teach them how to soothe it. For the next time. What is the purpose of pain anyway? For women, it comes every month. I bleed, I cramp, I hurt. I hunger.
And when it is too much, then what? When you were overwhelmed, Mary, you walked.
When I am afraid I will get stuck in pain,
I walk.
When I am afraid there is no way through a difficulty,
I walk.
When I cannot move,
I walk with someone, with a dog, or with assistance.
When you first became pregnant,
You walked.
In the last days of pregnancy,
You walked or rode on a donkey.
Birth plans, birth, pregnancy, parenting, all of these things force us into the unknown. We cannot plan it, make it happen or not happen. We either shake our expectations and accept what is, or we suffer for something beyond our control. There is pain. I’m not sure about purpose, but sometimes pain sharpens the sense onto what needs attention. Sometimes grief does this, or joy. They bring forth embodiment.
When in pain, your story says to me, walk, speak, go where you need to go, accept the unplanned, trust in family and friend and G-d and Joseph and your body.
When we walk, we breathe. When we give birth, we must breathe. When we meditate, we breathe. When we run, sing, and dance our breath intermingles with the world around us, the human and more-than-human world, and we are alive and connected even if we do not say it out loud. Even if we must scream through our contractions. Even if we just breathe.
The time is nearing, and I am so glad to be walking with you.
Sincerely,
Sarah
December 7, 2022:
Dear Mary,
Did you know the more-than-human creatures on earth are dying? When I think of this, my shoulders grip, my chest constricts, my head hurts, my throat closes. I have no voice, no speech, only despair, only grief. It is not good news. But you know? I always tell my kids to turn negative into positives, much as you did. Pregnant. Teenager. Unwed. Negative. You said yes, and you asked questions and you ventured. Positive.
What is there to say yes to, now? What is there to give birth to now? What questions do we need to ask? How to be present? While dreading the future and blaming the past? Or not wanting the future and grieving what we’ve lost? How Mary? Where is the birth of hope now? Only in the past?
We are part of a body, a birth, a full moment. You said yes to creative love, you said yes in spite of everything. You said yes I will carry hope. You already saw what others did not but would eventually.
Like the way you see a tree. It takes time, time to really see a tree. To really acknowledge it’s long, bold, original presence in this urban landscape. It’s solid. It’s life. It’s movement. The tree is moving always, more deeply than all the cars and people whizzing by.
I am grateful that my eyes now see the trees. My skin now feels the sun and I hear the birds. These things awaken and tickle and enliven something in the center of my chest, right behind my ribs. This is what matters. This more than human and human community. We are connected. This is what needs paying attention to. This tree. And this worm. And this bug. And this moon.
If you live inside a room long enough, rearrange it, recarpet it, paint it, it becomes only the busy-ness of a mind at work, of our own expectations and desires. But if we sit with the essence of the house, we see what it does to keep us safe, alive, warm, breathing, dry, clean, and we begin to want that for everyone. We begin to want to dwell at the inn.
You shook our expectations by not having any of your own, just acceptance and hope and love. The animals are there for the birth of love, your breaths all mingling with each other.
What can be more intimate than to breathe with another, to hold and to touch, Julian of Norwich marveling at a nut1, or a mother marveling at a baby, or a father marveling at a mother. The lost tiny thing. We can despair that we are so tiny, so vulnerable, so little in this universe, and be afraid. Or we can know the hairs on our head, every bird, every feather, every grain of sand, is accounted for and enfolded in a universe of love, we can feel it in our moments of stillness. Not in hurricanes and busy-ness, but when we sit at the edge and are still, breathing, breathing, when we see the tree and know that we are a part of it, there is nothing in between. There is nothing in between. The heavens are shining, the animals are lowing, and there is breath here, to care for the earth, to participate, as another amazing woman says2, for the privilege of breath.
Thank you,
Sarah
1And in this he showed me something small, no bigger than a hazelnut, lying in the palm of my hand, and I perceived that it was as round as any ball. I looked at it and thought: What can this be? And I was given this general answer: It is everything which is made. I was amazed that it could last, for I thought that it was so little that it could suddenly fall into nothing. And I was answered in my understanding: It lasts and always will, because God loves it; and thus everything has being through the love of God.
~ Julian of Norwich, Revelations of Divine Love, Chapter iv. A.D.1373
2We are all bound by a covenant of reciprocity: plant breath for animal breath, winter and summer, predator and prey, grass and fire, night and day, living and dying. Water knows this, clouds know this. Soil and rocks know they are dancing in a continuous giveaway of making, unmaking, and making again the earth. Our elders say that ceremony is the way we can remember to remember. In the dance of the giveaway, remember that the earth is a gift that we must pass on, just as it came to us. When we forget, the dances we'll need will be for mourning. For the passing of polar bears, the silence of cranes, for the death of rivers and the memory of snow.
~ from BRAIDING SWEETGRASS by Robin Wall Kimmerer
December 12, 2022:
Dearest Mary,
You are often seen as so gracious, humble, and quiet. That could be the fallout from all those nativity scenes of you and Joseph, not saying anything, just staring at the new baby. But I’m no longer satisfied with this. Not after those words you spoke at Elizabeth’s house. This time, this 9 months of pregnancy is a foreshadowing of your son’s life to come, traveling, proclaiming justice and love, returning to Bethlehem to give birth, to be born, to die and be reborn.
Not after all of your journey through these 9 months of carrying a child without being married, going where you must go, as Ruth did, proclaiming that there is suffering, as Naomi did, the birth of a baby the sign of a new life for everyone, as Tamar did, in her own immaculate conception, a trickster, on the edge of society, as Rahab was.
You were visited by an angel, you wrote poetry, you walked for miles, you were so young, you were open to creative mystery.
Stories are lights in the dark, warm beacons signaling hope and warmth and love and return. We’ve been reading the stories of women, women in your family tree, in your son’s family tree, your husband’s. When I began reading these stories I hoped to be able to feel hunger and hope, to invite mystery and wonder, to contemplate a void being filled. To walk with you to Elizabeth’s, to Bethlehem, to walk in your shoes and talk along the way through these letters.
I was hoping to get to know you better. To go from should know you to want to know you. From what was expected to what is.
Are we getting there, you and I?
It is 7am here in the middle of Michigan in a country not even born yet during your time, Mary. Later this week, I will be gathering with a congregation to sing and worship and tell your story culminating in the nativity. We will gather in a way unimaginable to you, but the wondrous thing is, whether we find ourselves alone or with family, with coffee or tea, with a ham in the oven or bread rising on top, we can all be together in one virtual place for a few minutes. We can gaze at each other, like you gazed at the baby you birthed. Through words on the page, letters and stories form the Bible, and words spoken, across space and time, we are inviting you here with us.
This is how love moves, by emerging and dissolving over and over again, blossoming, ripening, bearing seeds that drop to the earth to be born again, gaining in strength and wisdom through ribbons of roots that connect us, anchor us, roots befriended by fungus that teach trees how to use sugar, that move carbon and oxygen to them so that we can all breathe. We cannot help but be connected to each other just as we cannot help but breathe. Even these screens, you know, these computers, even this zoom and these fibers that connect us now are born from earth materials, bringing us together, a kind of virtual virtue.
Can you imagine if the Wise Men had simply looked up the IP address for the Inn in Bethlehem and zoomed in instead of making the long, long journey on camels? Things would have been different.
Mary, virtuous, we are meeting virtually, full of virtue. Faith, hope, and love, virtues. May we meet you virtually this way. Is this naïve? Perhaps, perhaps not. I could not see it as the wisest thing, to let faith, hope, and love enter in, until when? Until I gave up my own efforts to achieve it. More on that later.
Love,
Sarah
December 25, 2022:
Dear Mary,
What were you thinking?
I should tell you, there are a lot of assumptions about your virtues, Mary: gracious, humble, obedient, but I’m no longer satisfied with this. Not after those words you spoke at Elizabeth’s house. Not after 9 months of carrying a child out of wedlock, putting you on the edge of society, just like Rahab. Not after, in your first trimester, walking for miles, as Ruth did, to see Elizabeth, and while you were there proclaiming the goodness of G-d by naming suffering and hunger, as Naomi did. You proclaim that this birth means the promise and fulfillment of new life, in the same way it did for Tamar through her own kind of trickstery immaculate conception.
You were visited by an angel, you spoke poetry, you walked for miles, you were so young, you were open to creative mystery, and the narrator, in this holy moment, after all of that, says, “And Mary pondered all these things in her heart.” Why do you choose to be silent now? What were you thinking?
There are thousands of pictures and statutes of you are silently treasuring and pondering all over lawns and churches and homes, but not one of them includes a speech bubble of your inner thoughts. Joseph is often sitting next to you, angels and shepherds, an ox and donkey scattered around, but you are all silent. Today, a day pregnant with expectations of all kinds, today is the origin story of that nativity scene.
But I’m guessing the nativity wasn’t silent or still, was it? By the end of last night, you completed a completely unexpected journey while pregnant, probably going through contractions on the back of a donkey. You were tired, hungry, thirsty, and relieved to find a place to rest, even if it wasn’t the most ideal place for giving birth. Another birth plan out the window. But you did give birth! And congratulations by the way!
Everything about that day was totally unexpected. The breaking news given to shepherds by a massive angel choir? The Messiah a baby? And in a manger? As shepherds bust into the inn to see, to talk, to shout in wonder and amazement while you attempt to breast feed for the first time, what is firing in your mind? What constellations of understanding are just now blossoming in your consciousness?
I think this is the time to tell you that story I promised a couple weeks ago, about a cow blocking my path.
Loveday was her name, a Jersey with the longest, most luxurious eyelashes and the softest, deepest brown eyes. (show pic). These features were topped off with a charming spray of long brown hair just between her ears. She was beautiful, but she did not come when I called her in for milking. Nor did she go when it was time for her to mate with a eligible bull. She stayed in her own pasture, completely ignoring the stud one field over for days. Then, when everyone had given up and the gate was closed, a drizzly day marked in memory by a rainbow arching over the fields, somehow Loveday got through the fence and decided that it was time, and Bow was born just over nine months later, but not before I began to understand something about Love.
It was late summer, I was in my mid-twenties, and I was walking down the footpath through the pasture where I could collapse in bed. It was just before sunset. I was bone tired after a week of hay harvest on top of the everyday work. The path was beaten down by years of organic farm interns before me learning to seed hundreds of lettuces, to prepare garden beds, to transplant tender starts without damaging their stems, to keep fungus and aphids at bay, prepare CSA orders on Saturday, and tending never ending compost piles, and there was Loveday, a very pregnant Loveday, laying right across my well-worn path. Two front hooves tucked under just so and two back legs splayed out to the sides of her ample belly, tail thumping, mouth chewing lazily, and the smell of hay and warm clover wafting off her back. She would need quite a heave to get up from where she sat. It’s as if she knew I needed to stop. The end of a long, emotionally and spiritually exhausting journey to find contentment and spiritual awakening, happiness and gratification from somewhere outside of myself. Something I could earn if I just said the right words, felt the right way, made the right choices. I was expecting it at every turn, but it never came.
I was so, so tired, and Loveday felt so, so warm and close and different. In a kind of daze, I accepted her bovine invitation and plopped down next to her and laid my head on her swollen belly that held her unborn calf. She let me lie there for a while, skin to hide, and my breath began to match her breath. Her belly went up and down, my breath went in and out. I was completely in the presence of this massive, pregnant, independent, earthly ruminant.
Stillness. No talking. No judgement or expectations. Only presence. I was empty, and inside that void a spark fired, gratitude, love.
I was comforted, not just by her massive weight underneath my weary head, but by a sudden realization there were sparks of love everywhere, not out there, but within. My expectations broke in two, CRACK, and I shifted from should to is. There was something in me already that wanted to be born, like Loveday’s calf. Stardust remembering its birth story, electricity searching for connection, I was not alone.
Suddenly, Loveday heaved and rocked upright, and to my utter (udder?) surprise, began to prance a little on the path. The light was just about gone, but Loveday lifted her front hooves and, I kid you not, she was dancing, her giant belly swaying to and fro in dusky delight. I laughed and cringed a little to see such exuberant undulations. She should have been in her own paddock by then. Instead, she lingered in the fading rays of a star and danced her way back through the open gate in her own time. I closed it behind her, a container of joy.
It has been about 22 years since I breathed with Loveday, and I am still treasuring and pondering the mystery of inner spark. Joanna Haradar describes your pondering as an inner calm, cenetered, spaciousness, a place where the critical mass of treasured experiences lies stacked, and if you breathe into them, spontaneous gratitude ignites and CRACKLE. Wonder. Joy. Transformation. Dancing.
Can I be so bold as to guess, Mary, that you weren’t thinking at all, you were just present? Suddenly grounded by a love, born into the world freely, for everyone, connecting us all, angel, shepherd, warm cows, G-d, in one beautiful nativity. G-d inhabits us from the inside out, incarnate. A totally unexpected realization. In this place, in these bodies, in all of our humanness, there is G-d, the spark of creativity and generative love. The only way to experience that fully, sometimes, is in silence, the only sound an inhale and an exhale.
A breath for each woman, Tamar, Rahab, Ruth and Naomi, Bathsheba, Mary, Anna, Weeping Mothers and Wisdom. One for each woman in your life that has traveled with you, generations before and will travel on generations after. One for the creatives and loves inside of you, ribbons of suffering and joy, pain and elation, proclamation and meditation, shouts and silences.
Dearest Mary, after these last few weeks of advent we are here with you, exhausted, hungry, and thirsty as the clamor of life, even the glorious and wonderful clamor, increases in volume. We might not have arrived with everyone that we started with and grieve. We may have picked up new companions along the way and are joyful. I tried leaving a few worries back there, only to pick them up again. That’s okay. The journey may have been well worn for some of us, or completely new for others, but here we are, part of a remarkable journey that began a long, long time ago, the migration towards light lit by the stars, marked by magnetism, followed by geese and whales and camels. For me, the journey well-worn is between what I should feel and what I do feel. What I should be and what I am. IT is a journey through joy, prophecy, pain, and expectation to find you still, counting the breaths of Love just born, and can put down our expectations at last and just breathe.
Thank you and Happy Loveday.
Love,
Sarah
P.S. To the congregation: On this Loveday, if you can, let go of expectation for a minute or two and see what comes up. Perhaps you will be surprised by gratitude, by joy. Maybe you will fall asleep. Maybe you will dance. And if nothing comes up, that’s okay, focus on taking three breaths together with a child, a partner, a pet, a friend, a treasured memory, an ancestor, a tree, and may Love find you present, still.
