So....my child doesn't sleep. Actually, that's not entirely true. He does sleep, just not for very long periods of time. And he doesn't sleep through the night. Ever. For the last six months of his life at least, he has woken up three times a night at the minimum, with the average being closer to five. So, needless to say, my brain doesn't function very well. It's tired. I'm tired. We're exhausted. And this state of being is not conducive to writing. I've had some post ideas in the works for a while, but it's hard to write when your brain feels like a pile of cold oatmeal. So instead, I thought I would share a picture and a poem that blessed me recently.
I love the story of the Annunciation. I love how much God valued Mary's humanness, dignity, and free will, just as he values ours. I love that Mary trusted enough to say yes, even though the future was so very unclear. I could use a dose of that trust (especially when it comes to whether or not I will actually ever sleep again ). I love this painting of the Annunciation by J. W. Waterhouse, where Mary touches both her mind and her heart, as if to illustrate that beautiful verse which says, "Mary kept all these things and pondered them in her heart". And I love this poem by Denise Levertov, called (wonder of wonders) Annunciation. I hope you love it too :).
Annunciation
‘Hail, space for the uncontained God’
From the Agathistos Hymn,
Greece, VIc
We know the scene: the room, variously furnished,
almost always a lectern, a book; always
the tall lily.
Arrived on solemn grandeur of great wings,
the angelic ambassador, standing or hovering,
whom she acknowledges, a guest.
But we are told of meek obedience. No one mentions
courage.
The engendering Spirit
did not enter her without consent.
God waited.
She was free
to accept or to refuse, choice
integral to humanness.
____________________
Aren’t there annunciations
of one sort or another
in most lives?
Some unwillingly
undertake great destinies,
enact them in sullen pride,
uncomprehending.
More often
those moments
when roads of light and storm
open from darkness in a man or woman,
are turned away from
in dread, in a wave of weakness, in despair
and with relief.
Ordinary lives continue.
God does not smite them.
But the gates close, the pathway vanishes.
____________________
She had been a child who played, ate, slept
like any other child–but unlike others,
wept only for pity, laughed
in joy not triumph.
Compassion and intelligence
fused in her, indivisible.
Called to a destiny more momentous
than any in all of Time,
she did not quail,
only asked
a simple, ‘How can this be?’
and gravely, courteously,
took to heart the angel’s reply,
the astounding ministry she was offered:
to bear in her womb
Infinite weight and lightness; to carry
in hidden, finite inwardness,
nine months of Eternity; to contain
in slender vase of being,
the sum of power–
in narrow flesh,
the sum of light.
Then bring to birth,
push out into air, a Man-child
needing, like any other,
milk and love–
but who was God.
This was the moment no one speaks of,
when she could still refuse.
A breath unbreathed,
Spirit,
suspended,
waiting.
____________________
She did not cry, ‘I cannot. I am not worthy,’
Nor, ‘I have not the strength.’
She did not submit with gritted teeth,
raging, coerced.
Bravest of all humans,
consent illumined her.
The room filled with its light,
the lily glowed in it,
and the iridescent wings.
Consent,
courage unparalleled,
opened her utterly.
