adviento: maría

Picture created by RIBLA meeting at ISEDET, autumn 2006.

Love cries from a stable trough,
His passion foretold.
Still, we make ready
For a world fashioned anew.

Mary’s risk

Mary you took a risk
not with strangeness but familiarity.
You didn’t go innocent and pure
but with eyes opened,
by unwed mothers send beyond the village.
You went knowingly, deliberately.
Surely you would hesitate.
Such a dreadful thing to be asked of you.
But you said yes
And had faith
in your God who lifts up those cast down.

Another feeling I have -
one I’m not yet willing to let go of
but keep turning over, looking at it from different standpoints-
is that you didn’t have a choice;
or rather the only choice you had
was to accept the angel’s gift of possibility and purpose
out of a terrible thing.
What makes men act like this?
Making much of their power
soldiers conquering.
So the angel brought you a change for peace.
And your decision was whether to trust after, not before.

And you did trust.
And you did risk.
And we do too.

Rachel Starr, Advent 2001

This week's readings are available online here.