Nora Gallagher begins her latest book with a quote from James Michener’s Chesapeake:
“The ultimate source of the Susquehanna River was a kind of meadow in which nothing happened … merely the slow accumulation of moisture from many unseen and unimportant sources, the gathering of dew, so to speak, the beginning, the unspectacular congregation of nothingness, the origin of purpose... This is how everything begins—the mountains, the oceans, life itself. A slow accumulation—the gathering together of meaning.”[1]
It is also how the Incarnation begins: with a slow accumulation—the gathering together of meaning. Life-size bronze statues stand today in the courtyard of the Church of the Visitation, on the quiet outskirts of the little village of Ein Kerem in Israel: Two women in silhouette, willowy and graceful despite the bumps of growing pregnancy beneath their long, flowing robes … Mary, just an innocent teenage girl, and Elizabeth, an older woman made wise by years of disappointment, by slow years of waiting. Bellies almost touching, they lean in to each other, face to face, whispering of strange things--Sharing the secret of new life in the sunlight, by a spring. Until the Holy Spirit comes down, that is, and songs of praise are drawn out from them, songs that grow beyond anything that they could imagine.
The Magnificat, Mary’s song of praise, does not begin with theological statements about God. It does not begin with a recitation of the history of Israel or a recounting of the grand miracle of creation. It does not begin with meaning. It begins with her amazement that God has come to her, a poor Jewish peasant girl from the Galilee. She knows that her life has been nothing special, yet she also knows the songs of other mothers who have found themselves miraculously with child, old mothers like Sara, barren mothers like Hannah who, centuries before her, sings in thanksgiving for her pregnancy: “My heart exults in the Lord; my strength is exalted in my God … There is no Rock like our God.”[2]
Mary begins with her own experience, her own experience of transformation from emptiness to the fullness of life: from girl to mother, from milking goats and hauling water to speaking with angels, from shivering in the cold to being wrapped in the loving-kindness of God, from lowly peasant to Mother of God. Slowly, as she continues speaking, her words shift from her own situation to the experience of her people, from her own transformation to all of the times in Israel’s history that God has lifted oppression, fed the hungry, punished the unjust, or raised up the poor. It is as if her words get away from her, radiating out across time, gaining power and strength and meaning until the words themselves seem to cause the transformations of which she speaks: He has cast down the mighty from their thrones, * and has lifted up the lowly. He has filled the hungry with good things, * and the rich he has sent away empty. He has come to the help of his servant Israel, * for he has remembered his promise of mercy.
I heard this week about a controversial setting of the Magnificat by the contemporary composer Conrad Sousa that depicts for us in music the growing power of Mary’s song. It begins quietly, softly, in very simple melodic lines. But as it continues, it grows in musical complexity and even dissonance. Sounds begin to fly haphazardly around the room, as if the world is falling apart, as the music stands for the shattering of preconceptions involved in divine transformation. Suddenly, the unpleasant whirling of noise stops—and there is silence. Only after a long silence does the choir break in with peals of “Glory, Glory to God in the Highest.”[3]
Just as meaning comes to Mary in slow accumulation—in a long history of insignificant people and strange divine acts—and bursts forth in a slow crescendo in the midst of intimate conversation, so too meaning comes to us, as “the slow accumulation … from many unseen and unimportant sources.” Just because we don’t realize what is going on until after the shattering silence of transformation, does not mean that God was not in what we perceive as insignificant beginnings. So often, we Christians want to find our meaning in the generalities of morality, the generalities of doctrine, grasping at the air of Truth or Goodness that surrounds general concepts. I remember thinking when I was younger that meaning must come from outside of me, already wrapped by God in golden paper like a lovely Christmas gift. Mary shows us, however, that meaning grows out of our own amazement, that it must be discovered in reflection, in shared conversation with others, and that it is true when it grows beyond anything that we can control.
Christian philosopher Paul Ricoeur explains that we truly know God only in particularities, in what is individual, unrepeatable, and unique. For Ricoeur, God is revealed in the face of a particular, irreplaceable, individual human being; in the particular moment captured in a work of art; in the uniqueness of a glimpse of the natural world, at a certain time, in a certain light.[4] Think about it: Doesn’t God come to you today when the voices of the choir come together to touch your heart in just a certain way, in just a certain moment? Doesn’t God speak to you in the love of a fellow human being who is as unique and irreplaceable in this world as their own fingerprint? Isn’t God revealed in a certain landscape, when the sun happens to come through the clouds in a certain way that might never happen again were you to visit that place hundreds and hundreds of times? Doesn’t God speak to you in a certain translation of a certain verse of scripture, read at a certain time of day? God is revealed in particularities. It is only in sharing those particular experiences, in mulling them over with others, in incorporating them with your own story and the story of your community, that it all comes together—and then blows you away.
In our spiritual lives, we have more in common with Mary than we think. I believe that is the reason that Mary’s prayer of thanksgiving resonates so strongly with us. That is why her words speak at all to us comfortable Christians here today. It seems as if Mary’s words should frighten us, for we are the mighty who are about to get knocked off of our thrones. We are the rich of this world who are about to get sent away hungry. But instead of frightening us, Mary’s words of world-altering upheaval seem to warm even our own well-fed, complacent hearts. That is because Mary does not begin with proclamations of condemnatory Truth. She begins with amazement over God’s place in her own story, just as we do. The images of liberation and joy over the end of oppression are the meaning that grow from her story, from our shared story, and we recognize their difficult truth in our own hearts.
Who are you? What is your ordinary, particular story? When was the last time that you shared your experience of God with a loved one, in the quiet, in the sunlight, by a spring? If you try it, though, watch out. For the words that you utter will belong to God, and they will shake your world to its foundations.
[1] Nora Gallagher, The Sacred Meal (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 2009), 1.
[2] I Samuel 2:1-2.
[3] According to what I remember as an acquaintance told me about the piece. I was not able to find a copy of this in order to listen to it for myself!
[4] Paul Ricoeur, L’unique et le singulier, (Liege : Alice Editions, 1999), 46-47.
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