If You Want

 

Good Tuesday morning, good pilgrims of The Way of Advent. I like to think of Advent as The Way of Mary. Pregnant. Heavy with possibility. Trying to untether herself from shame and guilt, confusion and anxiety so she can make room for wonder.

Every now and again, she looks up at the velvet night sky, watching God rearrange the stars and the planets into fanciful forms of Brown Dwarfs and Red Giant Stars and Black Holes.

I love the way, this time of year, I naturally slow down enough to actually begin to really notice more things: How, in 28-degree temperatures of the early morning, the blue of the water is the deepest blue and the seagrass is as brown as desert sand.

The sky is the palest of blues, its canvass occasionally cut through by a splash of the deep red of the leaves of the sugar maple, which cling stubbornly to the branch and refuse to fall until one of the strong winds that usher Winter into our lives blows hard enough to convince it to surrender.

In Delaware, the Live Oaks are the last to lose their leaves, turned pale yellow and light green, sometimes not until Spring when new leaves begin to appear.

In these days of Advent, I think of Mary and her journey, her body swaying to the rhythm of the donkey's gait, holding onto her protruding belly as the donkey navigates the ripples and ravines of the desert sand.

It wouldn't be late fall or early winter, there, on the road from Nazareth to Bethlehem. No, scholars say was more like March or April when she gave birth - still chilly and cold in the ancient land known as Judah and Samaria, especially at night and the very early hours of the morning.

As I was praying this morning, this ancient poem, one of my favorites, written by St. John of the Cross (1542-1591), fell out of my prayer book. I first discovered it while I was on retreat at the Convent of St. Helena.

As I recall, it was hanging on the wall near a doorway into one of the common rooms. I wasn't looking for it. I wasn't looking for anything, really, in that luxurious way one has of doing nothing in particular on retreat and then suddenly, out of the blue, you find yourself stumbling into a deep hole of spirituality so rich and profound that it makes you dizzy while you stand there reading it.

I must have been there during Advent because I labeled it "A Poem for the first week of Advent". That's not what St. John of the Cross named his poem. He called it, "If You Want".

So, if you want, you can read it now, during this first week of Advent, but it doesn't stop here. You can read it all through Advent, or, really, any time during the year.

" . . . for each of us is the midwife of God, each of us. . . ."

I hope something good happens to you today.

Bom dia.

If You Want

If
you want
the Virgin will come walking down the road
pregnant with the holy,
and say,
“I need shelter for the night, please take me inside your heart,
my time is so close.”

Then, under the roof of your soul, you will witness the sublime
intimacy, the divine, the Christ
taking birth
forever,

as she grasps your hand for help, for each of us
is the midwife of God, each of us.

Yet there, under the dome of your being does creation
come into existence eternally, through your womb, dear pilgrim—
the sacred womb in your soul,

as God grasps our arms for help; for each of us is
His beloved servant
never far.

If you want, the Virgin will come walking
down the street pregnant
with Light
and sing.

–St. John of the Cross (1542 – 14 December 1591), in Daniel Ladinsky Love Poems from God: Twelve Sacred Voices from the East and West (New York: Penguin Group, 2002), 306-307.

PS: If anyone knows the creator of this wonderful image of Mary, please let me know. I found it on Pinterest, posted by someone named Drew Martin, who used it to warn us about the "evils of abortion". Never mind. Mary wouldn't. She knew the power of her own autonomy (If you want). So did Gabriel who had the decency to wait for her answer.