CHITSIDZO

 In Zimbabwe, Shona mothers sing a traditional lullaby, “Chitsidzo”, to their babies. While looking into her child's eyes, the mother has the sensation that the baby is older than she.

[1]

Bundled in bloody afterbirth

he came to us

a wet escapee

from the fluid flowing sodden belly shelter Mary.

Had he known before

before he took flesh

had he known this world

this womb

this lovely shimmering perplexing

world womb before?

Or did his eyes open that night

for the first time,

for the first time deep within

this enigmatic grotto of our universe?

Did air

heavy moist sharp air

vex soothe arouse his new raw skin

nostrils throat and lungs?

Did sounds stirring

first sounds

distinct, separate, clear sounds

moaning clucking hissing

rustling sounds

confuse frighten fascinate

his beginner’s ear?

Did new light

torch light star light

light of moon and lantern on lucent mother’s face

soft light of late night color

beguile enthrall bewitch

his seeing?

When for the first time he inhaled

the breath of night

did odors of beasts

straw wool fire

startle or please him?

[2]

By what means or mysteries

by what high ways or low ways

through what empyrean canals

do our children come to us?

Do they follow stars to find us?

Do faint remembrances resonate

within them?

Do they bear memories of dwellings

we know no longer of?

Do the angels sing their births?

Does earth tremble

before each child begins to cry?

[3]

Road-worn exhausted Mary

herself a stranger

made strange by the world

made strange by whims and winds of circumstance

made more strange by this birth

Mary took this child of blessing to her breast

felt the milk of life flow forth from her

and was content.

Content

and with wonder Mary caressed wee fingers

fingered damp midnight hair

brushed tiny cheeks

gazed into dark probing eyes

that searched her eyes

and knew already her heart.

© Budd Friend-Jones

December 28, 2018

(Photo collected by Ashley Harris on Pinterest)

©Budd Friend-Jones

Ave Maria, Pietà

 Elizabeth practically shouted her own version of the Ave Maria when Mary came to visit: “Blessed are you among women!”

This is how we want to see you: Blessed, exalted, favored, chosen. We clothe your images in the finest fabrics and lace. We dress you in gold and silver. We want you to be the epitome of strength, beauty and serenity for us.

But we forget the elder Simeon’s blessing. He said a sword would pierce your soul. We forget your utter terror when Herod’s soldiers came looking for your baby; they slaughtered so many children. We forget the horrors of gathering your newborn in the dark of night in a desperate escape. We forget the fear of crossing borders into an alien country, of becoming refugees, strangers in a strange land. We forget your years of wandering furtively over Egyptian countryside, struggling with language and laws, all the while seeking shelter and food.

We forget the panic your felt when Jesus went missing for three days, missing in a large anonymous crowd, missing somewhere in the tense urban streets and alleys of Jerusalem.

We forget the apparent rejection by Jesus himself when you and your other children came to talk with him. “Who is my mother?” he said. That must have hurt. Then pointing to the crowd, he added,

“These are my mother and my siblings. Those who do the will of God, they are my family.” Was this a sword that sword pierced your soul?

We forget the agony of watching helplessly by as your child was arrested by brutal guards, tried in a sham show trial, and scourged in a public setting while crowds jeered and mocked.

We forget your nausea when your son staggered beneath the weight of his cross on the road to Golgotha. We forget, Mary, that you watched life ebb from the very body you brought forth from your own.

We forget how, as the sun descended, you accompanied his broken body to a borrowed tomb. We forget the heavy rock that barred you from giving even a farewell kiss to your beloved child.

Perhaps you knew an even greater pain through all of this.

Judith Dupré once wrote,

“We cannot know the inner recesses of another person’s soul... As parents or caregivers, we plan, hope, and nurture, but the day comes when our children let go of our hands. (They) venture forth into the world to taste it on their own terms, and that world – their world – is not ours to know…”

Did you know this child? Really know him? Do any of us ever really know the “other”, even when the “other” is our own child?

Clara Park had an autistic daughter. She described her this way:

“She moved among us every day - among us, but not of us... She existed among us, (but) she had her own being elsewhere…”

So too, Mary, you were called to trust the ways of a child who was yours and not yours… who drew his being from you, and but from somewhere else as well.

Finally, Mary, we forget the survivor’s pain you bear.

The Italian poet, Giuseppe Ungaretti wrote that “the path of the dead is in the living.” Regardless of how we read scripture, or what we believe, your life went on. These swords pierced your heart. These memories left deep sorrows in you.

For all these reasons we say to you most tenderly, “Hall Mary, Pietà, May God be with You.”

The Annunciation by Henry Ossawa Tanner (1898.

©Budd Friend-Jones

December 11, 2022

Mayflower Church

Minneapolis, Minnesota

Maryam al-Mustafia, Twice Chosen

 This is the second of three meditations about Mary that I gave at Mayflower Church in Minneapolis, Minnesota on December 11, 2022.

It may surprise you to know that Mary – or Maryam, as she is known to Muslims – is highly revered in Islam. There is much more about Mary in the Qur’an than in the Christian New Testament. Allah (God) has preferred Mary above all the other women of creation. She is regarded as one of Islam’s four perfect women. She is the only woman named in the Qur’an. A whole Sura (or chapter), Sura 19, bears her name. It is recited by all Muslims, and especially favored by women. Its recitation is believed to impart a special blessing on both the one who recites and the one who listens.

Although she is the mother of Jesus, her importance in the religion appears somewhat independent of him. She is never called “the mother of Jesus,” but Jesus is always called “the Son of Mary.”

Maryam makes her first appearance in the Qur’an very near its beginning, in Sura 3. Her parents, Imran and Hannah, were old, childless, and far beyond child-bearing age. When Hannah watched a bird feeding her young, she decided she wanted a child too. She prayed. God answered. While still in the womb, the child was dedicated to Allah.

Maryam’s father died before she was born. She was raised in the Temple under the care of her uncle, Zachariah. If you are fortunate enough to visit the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, your guide may point out the room in which she is thought to have lived. She grew up on the grounds of the temple, which is now called 

al-Ḥaram al-Sharīf, the al-Aqsa Mosque compound, or simply the al-Aqsa Mosque. So did Jesus, Muslims believe.

Whenever Zachariah visited Maryam at the Temple, he always was surprised to see that she had baskets of food. Miraculously, it was out-of-season - summer foods in winter, and winter foods in summer. When asked who provided it, Maryam always answered cheerfully. Allah.

The angel Jibril (Gabriel) visited Maryam in an annunciation similar to the Christian story. But unlike the Christian story, there is no husband. She becomes a single mother. During her pregnancy, upright townspeople condemned and shamed her. Maryam left the Temple grounds and went into the desert.

When she went into labor, the pain was so great that she held onto a nearby palm tree. She nearly gave up. A voice came from the ground below. "Grieve not!” it said. “Thy Lord hath provided a stream of water beneath thee; Shake towards thyself the trunk of the palm-tree: It will let fall fresh ripe dates upon thee."

 

As in Christianity, so in Islam there is a vast body of literature on the subject of Maryam, and many differing opinions. Some Muslims contend that the virgin birth should be taken symbolically while others insist on its literal truth. In this religion, so defined by its prophets, was Maryam also a prophet?  Muslims still argue about that too, since all other prophets were men.

Bishop Fulton Sheen once said that Mary might be the bridge that reconciles and unites two of the world’s great religions.

 And Judith Dupré in her excellent book, Full of Grace, wrote that “(In) a time when the need to reconcile differing cultural traditions has never been more urgent, there probably has been no symbol… in Christendom that can mediate and build bridges with more success and amplitude than Mary.”

Hail Mary, full of grace. May it be so.

 

"The Annunciation" is by Rafael Soyer (1980).

 

©Budd Friend-Jones

December 11, 2022

Mayflower Church

Minneapolis, Minnesota

 

Why Mary?

 This is the first of three meditations I gave at Mayflower Church in Minneapolis on December 11, 2022. 

Snow fell all night outside the windows of the small octagonal oratory. The single candle illuminating the room cast an uncertain light on bare wooden walls. I had come to Saint John's Abbey for a solitary retreat. The Director of the Episcopal House of Prayer had welcomed me to this retreat house, but now I was alone. Enfolded within the warmth of this space, deep within the stillness of a Minnesota winter night, I began to cry. Icons of Mary – the Theotokos - emerged from the shadows. In a real and tangible sense, she had come to accompany me in my grief. She was my companion that night.

My mother died on the same day that Timothy McVeigh drove his truck to the federal building in Oklahoma City. I remember nothing about the bombing. I remember every detail of the phone call from my sister. I was born on my mother’s birthday; for forty-nine years we celebrated our birthdays together. But on this one, my fiftieth, she was gone.

The sun shone brightly on the next day. I trudged through deep snow to the Abbey Church for prayer. The guest master invited me to sit in the choir stalls; other guests guided me through several books of prayer, scripture and song.

Later in the day, I was drawn to a small alcove in the church. A Twelfth-Century wooden statue of Mary gently balanced her Child on her lap. In that dimly lighted space, she was not just the mother of Jesus. She was the Great Mother. She was not just a nurturing parent but the substance from which the Christ emerges. She was not just the vessel of divinity, but its throne, not just its bearer, but its expression.

My hand trembled as I placed a votive candle before her. My Methodist mother would never have understood, but this candle was for her, for us, and for all that had passed between us down through the years.

Years later I would lead pilgrimages of Muslims, Jews, and Christians to sacred sites of our religions. Our Mediterranean journeys always took us through Ephesus, an ancient center of the sacred feminine stretching back in time to the legendary Amazons. In Ephesus a modest stone house, known for generations as “Mary’s House”, is a bustling pilgrimage destination for Muslims and Christians alike.

A prayer wall stretches along a path leading to the house. Thousands of slivers of paper and cloth – the earnest petitions of Muslims, Christians, and a few skeptics as well - are tucked into its crevices. Muslims are praying. Catholics are celebrating Mass. Evangelicals are electronically amplifying their contemporary music. Nevertheless, contemplatives manage to find oases of quietude where they sit, meditate, and pray.

For believers and non-believers alike, the Annunciation discreetly acknowledges the mystery of conception. It celebrates the beginning of life and its holiness. Judith Dupré sees in Gabriel’s Ave Maria, in Mary’s response, and in Joseph’s commissioning, humanity’s transcendence of the idea of ourselves as merely mortal.

“Grace,” said Thomas Aquinas, “renders us like God, and partakers of Divinity.”

©Budd Friend-Jones

December 11, 2022

Mayflower Church

Minneapolis, Minnesota