The simple things we have are the things of truest beauty.

May 22, 2014

Mary, Mary & the Daniel Fast

Finches, cellos, kittens, fresh Amish milk, and the retelling of Cupid of Psyche have commenced my summer break. After being busier than I have ever been before with job 1, job 2, and school, I suddenly have time and must fill it. The six-month Daniel fast I've been on is almost over, I had to buy a swimsuit, and its time to plant a little garden. All these things together just scream half the year is gone. It's time to look at where it was gone and what investments are making their return. Years ago I used to write yearly, semi-annually and tri-monthly records on what I observed about life, a sort of statement or conclusion. This blog post will probably resemble those more than it will a domestic newsflash or poetical tidbit.

It can all begin with Daniel: a captive from Israel living in the palace of a Persian king, a man dissatisfied with the choicest pleasures made freely available to him, a mystic disdaining the accumulative wisdom offered by the world's most eminent magicians. And his passion was to understand. I took part in this pursuit by refusing meat and sweets and seeking real knowledge.
How do I know if knowledge is really real? When the world confirms it and bursts out in patterns expressing its truth, stunning my heart with its beauty. It must be solid like a stone to bear weight and supple like a vine connected to other proven truths. But this is a story, not a sermon, so I move from deduction to art.

Mary. Of all places, I least expected to find her at the community college. And of all people, it shouldn't have been my agnostic art teacher that unveiled her affinity to me. He translated the term theotokos which some of the most appealing Christian art bears. Theo, God; tokos, to carry and birth. They are portraits of virgin Mary holding her divine son, bearing the Word.
Suddenly, I realized a bond with this woman because I also carry the Word and hold him near me. Like Mary I received the gift of Jesus that turned my life upside-down, and have found him (like a child) impossible to ignore. At first, as a baby, he depended on his mother Mary and everything was simple. But as he got older he grew less like Mary's son and more like the son of a god, and finally showed himself to the whole world as God himself. Now, Mary sees she is dependent on him for life- the life she gave him. If I was Mary, I think I would contemplate this mystery my entire old age. As Anna, I probe it: I, too, hold Jesus inside; yet he holds me because he is a large scope in which everything else easily fits.

Thinking about this Mary brought me to another Mary who was so moved by the presence of Jesus in her town she took her priceless vial of perfume and broke it over him so that he dripped with it. Then she washed his feet by crying on them and dried them with her long hair. This devotion is so sincere and extreme it cannot be mocked! People did mock her, however; they thought it was scandalous.
When I read this story of abandonment my heart jumps up with a 'yes!'

Mary, Mary and Daniel sought to understand mysteries and discovered even greater anomalies. The revealed truth always outshone what was anticipated: like the woman who followed Christ's dead body to it's tomb and was the first to see him alive again, seeing in awe, like Psyche did when she raised her lamp above her husband expecting to find no supernatural beast as her sisters feared but a good man, not just a man, but a God!

These two Mary's make up one calling in my mind: to let Jesus in and be forever changed by it. Now I understand what I want to do all my life. And I think it is a good choice because it leads deeper than depth, further than I can imagine, revealing words when we looked for babies, and delivering gods where we expected men.


A long time ago I began a fabric portrait of a woman for my Beauty and Glory collection. It's been hanging unfinished in my closet. I've decided to name it Mary, Mary in honor of these two women. I don't expect to finish it- and it doesn't bother me because I can see a symbolism in it. I am art in the making, a jewel being polished, light needing the great Light to reflect if I am to be a light at all.

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