And if it please thee, let it be so that I put on
the mind of Mary.
From:  Putting on the Mind of Mary
Beth A. Gery

Mary, mere budding floweret in your innocence, you
were the first one to hear the news and believe – refusing to
dismiss it as a fanciful burst of inspiration springing forth
from your own maiden mind – how did you know to trust the angel
and accept your divine election?  Hail, thou that art highly favored . . .

How did you know to inscribe your song on parchment paper
as testament of your soul’s magnifying of the Most High?
 . . . from henceforth all generation shall call me blessed. 
Tell me, Mary, if you can or care to, had you some intuitive sense
that celestial beings were watching, and seeing your beauty
inside and out, signaled Gabriel, “This is the one.”

You were troubled; you questioned, How can this be?  Still, you
accepted the angel’s explanation as “the divine part,” releasing
your new song into an eyrie plane known only to you, abiding it
alone in your heart.  Little more than a child yourself, how did you do
that?  Were you not just troubled but terrified of the velvety darkness
that was coming upon you? Did you not long to flee to your mother
and tell her? 

Could you have answered, “No – not yet – give me some time
to consider if I can carry the weight of giving birth to hope, the one
promised to us for generations.”  The one of whom your mother
of gentle-mild nature surely taught you.  We are told only
that you went to your older cousin Elizabeth, also with child.

Dear winsome maiden, if you had no choice but to receive what
the angel told you . . . well . . . then it was not a test of obedience
but a Given: a mystery coming upon you that your body knew better
than your mind how to accept and cradle the assignment foreordained
by all preceding your birth into your own mother’s arms as proclaimed
in the beautiful psalm: Thou didst make me hope when I was upon
my mother’s breast.

Apocryphal texts attempt to fill in the spaces of the unknown in the story,
offering explanation and the name, Anna, for your mother, but so much
is hidden – left out of the mystery of the one coming among us:  dear little
stranger.  What remains is your praise, your mystical hope in the promise
unfolding within you.  Only this in your mind and your heart:  inner joy
and tenderness for the child you would bear.  Oh, Magnum Mysterium,
Great Mystery!  That lowly animals, ox and donkey, too, would gather –
as Isaiah foretold – around your new-born babe lying in a manger.

Shared by Margie Dimoplon