(Click HERE for last Sunday's readings)
As for myself, I have come to think of Mary as the patron saint of "both/and" passion over "either/or" reasoning, and as such, she delights my poetic soul... What Mary does is to show me how I indeed can be both virgin and mother. Virgin to the extent that I remain "one-in-myself," able to come to things with newness of heart; mother to the extent that I forget myself in the nurture and service of others, embracing the ripeness of maturity that this requires. This Mary is a gender-bender; she could do the same for any man.
- Kathleen Norris in Amazing Grace
One of the ongoing tasks in life is prioritization. Ardelle and I are constantly talking about what we should prioritize. Evenings at home with the kids. House projects. Relationships. Activities. It seems like much of life is about setting priorities. Saying no to this in order to say yes to that.
Maybe it's because I'm so convinced of the necessity of prioritization that the phrase "Virgin Mary, Mother of God" secretly delights me. Priority means that one thing comes before another either in time or in importance. And simply speaking the words "Virgin Mary, Mother of God" instantly makes a jumbled mess of whatever order we've attempted to impose on our religion.
The phrase is most common among Orthodox and Roman Catholic Christians. But it just states with scandalous clarity what all sorts of Christians have confessed for centuries. And, as Freud might say, the problem is with the mother. Or maybe I should say the problem is in the relationship with the mother.
If we're up at the God end of things, everything comes later or after, right? God creates mothers, and mothers bear virgins. That's getting our priorities right biologically, theologically, and grammatically all at once. But our phrase of the day suggests that somehow virginity is possible after motherhood. And the One who created our world from nothing can have a mother.
So maybe something in this Christianity is about losing our priorities.
Mary reminds us that all bets are off when it comes to the mystery of God. God isn't limited to the eithers and ors that we are.
Kate Alexander, our curate here at Christ Church, told me once that she still feels a little scandalous at the altar sometimes. Her own religious upbringing taught her that the male priest was the icon for Christ. Fortunately, Kate didn't let the priority given male clergy in our either/or world cut off the possibility that she might be called to that work.
I guess that in the end, the Virgin Mary, Mother of God doesn't show us how to pretend that we don't live in a world that demands that we sort our eithers from our ors. Her life was limited in ways few of us can imagine. What she shows us best is how to keep ourselves open to possibilities we can't yet imagine, to "come at things with newness of heart."
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Virgin Mary, Mother of God Oh boy!
Kathleen Norris hits the nail on the head for me when she says, “Depictions of Mary as a wealthy Renaissance woman do far outnumber those that make her look like a woman capable of walking the hill country of Judea and giving birth in a barn…to reclaim the Mary of Scripture may well require more depictions of her as a robust, and even muscular woman, in both youth and old age.”
Much has been made this week of Hillary Clinton tearing up and saying, “…I couldn’t do it if I just didn’t, you know, passionately believe it was the right thing to do,”…her voice catching. “You know I’ve had so many opportunities from this country, I just don’t want to see us fall backwards…this is very personal for me…I just believe so strongly in who we are as a nation so I’m going to do everything I can to make my case…then the voters get to decide.”
In a rare moment of raw emotion, she showed her human side. Pundit reaction has been interesting. Maureen Dowd of the NY Times chided, “Has Hillary truly grown from her mistakes? Has she learned to be less stubborn and imperious and secretive and vindictive and entitled?”
Columnist Gene Lyons retorts, “Translation: ‘Bitch!’ Having basically grown up in a Maureen Dowd column, albeit with less wit and more profanity, I’ve known this variety of Irish Catholic misogyny forever. My sainted mother warned me against the cunning and duplicity of women almost to her dying breath. It’s a sorrowful remnant of sexual Puritanism.”
When I was about thirteen, and found out what a virgin is, I was curious to know whether my parents believed that Mary was a virgin when Jesus was born. My “sainted mother” was liberal enough to explain to me that it was unconscionable for Mary to have been pregnant and not married, so the church said it was a miracle. At thirteen I said, “Okay, right.”
Recently on a trip to Memphis with a friend who is an Episcopal clergy person, we passed a church called “The Immaculate Heart of Mary, Catholic Church.” He said, “You know they teach that Mary was immaculately conceived, without the transmission of original sin.” At first I was incredulous. I did not know that the Roman church, in their continuing misogyny, had to start saying that Mary was immaculately conceived. Wow.
It seems to me that we have only to look at the double standard to which our female politicians are held, to understand how the perpetuation of the image of Mary as a demure virgin, without the taint of original sin, feeds the double standard to which we have held all women. As Susan and Kate, Mary Craig and Peggy, Susan Sims Smith and ++Katherine Jefferts Shory, and many others, celebrate the Eucharist and read the Gospel in our Episcopal churches, we are doing a small part to change that.
I love the fact that blogging is like playing the Telephone Game. Scott starts with an idea from a book, blogs his mind and some of us follow up with something related or resembling or not and by the time it's over we may have regress, or not! Almost like a mind cleansing.
But to follow-up on Trey's comment and set my own understanding of the Virgin Mary and priorities, I was born and raised Roman Catholic. (I knew nothing about the bible until I came to Christ Church.) So to me, Mary was only the mother of Jesus and the one I had to say penance to (3 Hail Mary's and 10 Our Father's if I was lucky) when I confessed my sins to a "male" priest in a dark cubby hole. And the last thing I ever questioned was a virgin birth or which came first. It just was and always will be.
The idea of priorities and the Virgin Mary Mother of God is a very strange thought and an exciting one for me as an ex-catholic.
As a Catholic, Mary was exhaulted. There were statues of her everywhere in the church and candles below to light for prayers asking her for help or guidance or simply for one who had died or needed help. She was a woman and a very important figure in the Catholic church but, why then didn't we have woman clergy? And why couldn't priests marry? I thought it was wierd, especially since it was highly encouraged to have babies - after marriage!
Then of course, there was Henry the VIII who changed it all. His decendants, but one, rid the churches of all icons including Mary's. If I'm not mistaken, it became Mary, mother of Jesus. The "virgin" was left out; especially during the short reign of Edward the VI.
Then came Elizabeth; A woman! Thank God for Elizabeth. She just left them all alone (Kinda) and let Catholics and Protestants come up with their own interpretations. She wasn't going to "look into the windows of men's souls." So Mary statutes came out of hiding and Catholics went on preaching the virgin birth and still no women clergy.
Four Hundred years later, the Catholics still have their priorities in the same place (even after the DaVinci Code) and the Protestants have moved on. We now have women clergy.
It's sort of interesting that the first woman priest that ever bless the congregation and me was Mary Craig Caruthers. I remember thinking at the time "Oh wow!" Then, "this is so cool and it's really okay!"
So that leads me to two things: First, that Mary is alive and well and hanging around helping us and guiding us but without the candles while standing right next to Jesus. Both teaching us that we should reach out and grab the gifts of all God's children, men and women.
As for keeping our minds open, what if someday when we're long gone, instead of saying "in the name of the Father, the Son and, the Holy Spirit", we say, "In the name of the Father, the Mother and Son, and the Holy Spirit?" It wouldn't be sacrilede because the Virgin Mary had been consecrated to God! Or, was that something I learned as a Catholic? If we're prioritizing maybe it should be the son and mother? Oh well, just a wild thought.
Second, to Kate Alexander, (one of the many blessings given to Christ Church,) that first blessing from Mary Craig made me feel the same way at first but, I got over it fast. So, YOU GO GIRL!
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