'Tis the season (again) to cry about Mary!
A reminder in these dark times that Advent is for memorizing the Magnificat—the whole thing, not stopping after the "I'm so humbled and happy to be here" part.
Also, a reminder of the LIFE-CHANGING link from Jael to Judith to Mary: three women not ever to be trifled with. I'm thinking about that connection a lot again this year.
"Women know what to do"
An old video of Reese Witherspoon has recently snagged the internet's subconscious. It's her acceptance speech at Glamour's 2015 Women of the Year awards, the one where she asserts that "ambition is not a dirty word."
But the stinger for me is this part, and it's worth watching:
For a long time, Mary's story has gotten the "what do we do now?!" treatment, and nearly all of its adaptations fail the Bechdel Test. How many women show up in most nativity scenes/Christmas pageants? One (1). One woman, a weird little menagerie of farm animals, a host of celestial beings, and a bunch of men who—at least in our tellings—visit a new mother with sheep (!) and/or burial spices (!!) in tow.
In these tellings, Mary is being done to and done for...well, except in that one magical moment where she (cynicism alert) does the most important thing a woman can do: give consent.
This is not true in the biblical narrative. Somehow, many of our nativity narratives out-patriarchy the Bible itself, which...is impressive.
In Luke's narrative, Mary knows what to do: she turns to another woman.
(Our new pastor made a great point in his sermon last week: in the conversation between Mary and Gabriel, Gabriel In All His [I presume Muscled and Eloquent] Glory cannot persuade Mary to say yes until he finally mentions that Elizabeth is also pregnant. The angel Gabriela might have led with that, my dude: "God's doing something interesting and has chosen two excellent women from your family to be at the vanguard.")
It's when Mary hightails it to Elizabeth's house that the Jael/Judith/Mary connection becomes clear. Elizabeth sees her. Elizabeth cares for her. They wait out their pregnancies together. They dream and plan for the overturn of domination systems together. (All the while, Zechariah is, um, blissfully quiet.)
We do not see Mary asking, "what are we going to do now?!"
We do not see Jael asking
We don't see Judith asking
We don't see Deborah asking
or Elizabeth
or Artemisia.
We see each of these women surveying the situation, confirming the details, having an "oh, shit" moment, and then getting a move on—nearly always in the company of other women.
This has never been more important to me. I am learning to undo the "what do we do now?!" impulse, which has always just been a performance anyway. I have learned to run to other women, like Mary does to Elizabeth. We sustain each other. We hold each other. We kvetch and rejoice together, and we plot the overthrow of tyrants together.
The call to action today is: if you're a Bible person, know that biblical narratives, even through the scrim of patriarchy, show women working in concert, knowing what to do. And whether you're a Bible person or not, GO TO YOUR WOMEN.
If you're one of those women for me, thank you. You mean the MOST, and I love you dearly.
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