Ave Maria

On Sunday we celebrated the Feast of Mary at Church. It is one of my favourite festivals and one not often acknowledged now besides a casual passing remark in the Church.

In part I guess there is very much a feeling of too much adoration of Mary being dare I say it Popish. Lets not set her up as the Mother of God, lets not venerate her as one, and sadly in our throwing out the mother with the bath water lets not acknowledge her as the Theotokos the Christ bearer. What happens in our turning Mary and dare I say women in general in the bible to curious footnotes or the good old Christmas favourite, is that we end up blocking a way back to God for many.

When I first came back to faith it wasn't God that clinched the deal it was Mary.
To come before God seemed too overwhelming on a first try, but here in Mary I found a way in. As someone who had spent a lot of time in the feminist movement the thought of a male God was quite frankly terrifying - after all you know what Christians have done to woman over the years. I think of it almost like people think of a genetic memory, that somewhere at a fight or flight level I held a sense of distrust and weariness of Christians. Of course this all becomes very confusing when the very thing you have been taught to beware of, is the very thing that continues to pull at your soul. And somewhere you know that if you don't go there, the real healing that needs to take place will never occur.

When I finally, after a sleepless night, found myself manically walking through the streets of Christchurch, driven by the knowledge that somehow I had to make a connection with God or I would be lost, it was Mary that pathed the way back in. After trying Church after church (closed) & finally finding an open one, I was left with a cold chill. I am standing on the threshold of this Church not even sure how I got there, very much aware of the doorway in which I stood being a portal to something new. On one side the old familiar 'drowning here' life, a step into the church and there a life fraught with danger and unfamiliar dangerous people with strange ideas.

This is not a logical moment, it is an instinctual one, one of intimate need and calling. Either way possibly destruction. As I stand there still in the door way my eyes become accustomed to the light, and there she is, a statue of Our Lady of Walsingham, Mary. What tiny biblical knowledge I have resurfaces and I see her not as the Mother of Our Lord, or any fancy title, but as the young woman in fear, met by an angel, given a challenge. The young woman placed in a situation where to say yes or no, is intensely dangerous. In her I found someone I could relate too, someone I could understand and who could understand me. A tentative step later and I am through the door.

The Visitation

He comes to her,

midnight blue meets bold as light- courageous day.

He pries the fist from her mouth
gently
finger by finger

Releasing lips he whispers thoughts of revelation
swallows whole... sweet words of decent
This is our secret little girl
our silent revolution.

Into this absolution... black... soft...uncertain

crashes the first and final son

Sometimes You Got to Go Where No One Knows Your Name

It strikes me today that sometimes you just have to go somewhere where no one knows your name.

This weekend at ordination training I spoke of my feeling of being churched out. I was encouraged to hear it was a common experience. Time pressures and the change of role meant nothing is the same as before. I realise there are different expectations on me now; I no longer fit into my community the same way as an ordinand, although how I fit in has yet to be defined. My behaviour is a little more scrutinised and I realise that what my church community has been, will never be again. I guess we are all looking at each other in a different light.

On Sunday I ended up at my husbands Church, I go to an Anglo Catholic Anglican Church, he to a 3rd Wave Vineyard Church. One of the things I notice when I go to different Churches is that I look for the people on the edge, to see how people who don’t fit with the norm are embraced by that Church. (And yes I do wonder about my own agenda of looking at this when I too have been feeling on the edge).

Anyway I was struck yesterday by a man I have often seen on the streets of the city, an older man who looks a little different, raggedy clothes, walks with a limp, whose hands are crippled, who has that air of someone so profoundly wounded that to look too deeply into his eyes would make you weep. To see him in the context of the Church though was a delight, here he was beaming, being greeted with genuine love by those around him, standing tall and fully immersed and involved in what was happening. His is a story of utter joy and abject sorrow. Institutionalised within the medical system at an early age he was so badly beaten there that he was permanently disabled. Yet here he was a man who I am told that on their recent men’s camp, put young men to shame with his courage and enthusiasm, a man whose share presence lifts you. At that moment who the leaders of the Church were was turned on its ear for me. Here in this man I saw the last become first. Someone who emulated what it was to be broken and raised up at the same time. His very presence let other broken people (and lets face it that's all of us) know that they had a place there. By simply being himself he gave permission to others to step forward in weakness, and authenticity. 'If he can do this, and the sky doesn't fall then so can I".

And what do you know, to my surprise I too find myself compelled to step out of the known and go forward for prayer at the end of the service. Standing there in the this foreign place, I realise that there is a relief in not being 'the ordinand', in not being known, or indeed needing to find the words. When I am asked what I want prayer for I pause all I can say is that, "I just need a moment, somewhere where I may break".