Last week we heard the song of the Shulammite woman, and the response of her partner, who stood up from our summer table to sing of the sacredness of physical life and love, to encourage us to feel its passion, to search out and make space for in partnered or unpartnered life the eros that generates creative life..
This morning we look round the table to find two women sat close together, each solicitous of the other.
The older brushes a strand of hair from the face of the younger with one hand,
even as the other hand rests on her own rounded stomach.
The younger one soon gets up to sing.
We hardly recognize her,
here in her simple summer dress,
here in the cloudy fields of Queen Anne’s lace
and hummocky ground,
the branches from our recent storm still scattered around.
We’re used to seeing her in deep tones of blue
but this morning green surrounds her.
We’re used to hearing her song in the clear sharp air of winter
and now we hear it softened by sun and birdsong.
I’ve wondered as I came to this table of melody whether summer would muffle Mary’s song,
would make it less extraordinary,
less vivid and well-muscled,
less edgy.
I’ve wondered whether the lazy air of summer would weigh down its far-flung passion
and make of it something more tame.
I’ve wondered how this song that we hear so often in the winter air would sound to us in summer.
Even as Mary stands up to sing we are caught in the cloth of blessing wrapped round her by her companion at table.
Elizabeth blessing her young relative with ordinary gestures and prophetic pronouncements,
blessing through a Spirit that springs in the child she carries.
We are caught in the strands from that touching place between Elizabeth and Mary.
The warmth of homely blessing clings to Mary as she sings.
We can see that her song is held in that blessing.
We can see that she is delivered to us and to all the world by the hands of love.
It is love that beats the rhythm of her song.
Elizabeth’s love, God’s love, Mary’s love, our love,
they are all in her song.
We can hear too that she is delivered to the world by the hands of love but that she knows a world of violence and fear.
Still, it is love she chooses to believe in.
It is love she chooses to carry in her body
and deliver into the cradle of creation.
It is that choice that I marvel at this morning,
that choice that remains unmuted in the summer air.
It is what Mary chooses to believe,
What she choses to give her heart to that inspires and astounds me over and over again.
In the face of all we know she must have experienced,
poverty,
oppression under Roman occupation
and oppression by her own economic circumstances,
danger as her pregnancy became obvious,
a knowledge that her material circumstances were unlikely to change for the better.
It is her choice, as she looks open-eyed into her life, that inspires and astounds me;
not a light choice,
not a fickle choice
but a choice delivered out of habits of the heart long practiced,
a choice delivered out of a life steeped in covenant with God,
a choice tied with her body to a dangerous and holy outcome,
a courageous choice.
As I prepared to host in myself reflection for this morning,
to let it come into my body and my mind and my heart
I was reading a chapter in The Politics of the Brokenhearted by Parker Palmer.
The subtitle is On Holding the Tensions of Democracy, Essays on deepening the American Dream.
It holds connections with Mary’s song and with our life as community through the habits of heart that it encourages.
Mary is blessed,
Elizabeth is quite clear,
because she believes.
And how I love that ancient meaning of believe,
that is “to give one’s heart to”.
Mary has given her heart over and over and over again,
despite the things she can see with her outward eye,
to the promise she holds in her heart.
Mary has given her heart to God,
a God of covenant,
a God who stands with her on the slate floor as Rome marches through her village,
a God who stands with her in our summer field where we may or may not pay attention,
a God who sees her when others may not.
To believe is to choose to give your heart,
even when you doubt,
even when you can’t see a result,
even when you can’t touch or hear it.
To believe is to give your heart to something deeper than doubt or external evidence.
It is to give your heart to one you hear in your soul when you press your ear close to it.
Palmer writes words about broken hearts.
He writes about heart in its original meaning as the core of the self. The broken heart that is needed is not one so brittle that it shatters in a thousand pieces, wounding all those who are near.
Rather it is what I would imagine as a heart that has grown supple, whose muscle has strengthened not toughened,
whose pores are open and receptive.
It is permeable and large enough to hold the self and the other’s experience,
open enough to withstand the temptation of quick answers to questions that deserve the respect of slow attention,
open enough to hold its own possibilities of healing or destructiveness, open enough to hold hope in the face of despair,
and compassion in the face of violence or apathy.
It is this kind of broken heart that Mary gives with her choice.
She holds within the heart the two realities of the day,
That she is a poor woman in a patriarchal society under another nation’s rule,
that there are plenty like her
and the reality that God has made a promise.
Not only does she repeat that promise with her words
she magnifies it,
amplifies it within her body.
She holds both smallness and greatness in her heart
In her embodied story she holds within,that which will change the large story of the world.
And so do we.
We don’t all bear Christ into the world the way Mary does but we each have our Magnificat to sing.
All of us are called to hold paradox,
to hold the tensions made visible in the image of the cross.
“The arms of the cross, Palmer says, ”stretch out four ways, pulling against each other left and right, up and down.
But those arms converge in a center, a heart, that is pulled open by the tension of opposition so we can pass through it into the fullness of life.” (233)
Mary is broken-hearted enough to sing a song of wholeness.
And sing she does.
And I have my answer.
I wondered as I came to this table of melody whether summer would muffle Mary’s song,
would make it less extraordinary,
less vivid and well-muscled,
less edgy.
I’ve wondered whether the lazy air of summer would weigh down its far-flung passion
and make of it something more tame.
I’ve wondered how this song that we hear so often in the winter air would sound to us in summer.
Today, as I hear the song sound over the field in the hot lazy air,
it is as strong as it ever was,
the song of a broken-open heart filled with joy and promise.
Now I wonder what about Mary’s song is just for you?
I wonder what magnificat, what magnifying song, what choice, is yours.
I wonder how your heart is this morning?
