Letters to Mary: Women are open to the impossible

“Love recognizes no barriers. It jumps hurdles, leaps fences, penetrates walls to arrive at its destination full of hope.” — Maya Angelou

 

Dear Mary,

This is my final letter to you this season of Advent. Lest we journey too fast to Nativity, we pause one final time to consider the femininity of pregnant waiting for the child to come. Your vision, Mother, gives us the ability to see the interconnectedness of presidents, daughters, noncitizens and kings. For we all come from the wombs of our mothers. God will flatten any hierarchy humans create as you sing in your song, the Magnificat.

“Nothing is more sacred than the human body,” author Meggan Watterson says. You help us understand this holiness, Mother. While the Catholic Church made you a perpetual virgin, we know from the Scriptures you bore more children because Jesus had brothers. Nor does virginity define you, as it does not define any woman, even though your name has been utilized to shame us.

You were blessed among women for your righteousness and humility, not for the state of your hymen. This sacred understanding of the body is echoed by your Son when he said, “This is my body and blood, broken and poured out for you.” Our souls and humanity are tied up in our physicality; only when we are abused do they seek to segment.

Mother, I wonder when you bore your first-born son if you felt in your body the miracle of love blooming along with the searing pain of childbirth. A holier moment had not yet taken place in the world, and this came to be with the work of your very flesh.

A sort of Madonna and child painting, My Nurse and I was painted by Frida Kahlo in 1937, considered by her to be her strongest work. We see a young limp Kahlo held in the arms of the woman who is her nurse but not her mother. The artist receives breastmilk but not nourishment and safety in the loving arms of a mother. Milk seems to be falling from the heavens. I wonder, Mother, if the suffering and grief of women Kahlo enjoins us to witness will come to an end. Will it be heaven sent?

There is an interesting choice of words in the Dec. 8 Presidential Message on the Feast of the Immaculate Conception stating, “Nine months later, God became man when Mary gave birth to a son, Jesus.” While the statement quotes the angelic message from Luke 1 explaining the coming conception of Jesus, this wording implies God did not become human when Jesus was conceived within you, Mother. Noteworthy because Republicans are the party against abortion. If Jesus was not God within your womb, then perhaps life begins at birth.

When will women have power and control over their own bodies? Is this not the nourishment women need, Mother?

So, I wait Mother, wondering if you will teach me how to live in this harrowing time as we are reversing rights and protections for women. I find myself overcome with grief and helplessness when I think about the future of the world for my own children.

The Epstein Files were not released in full, in violation of law this week, as the Trump regime continues to protect rapists and cover up sexual abuse of women and girls. Meanwhile CNN reports, “Epstein Accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell Launched Hail Mary Bid to Wipe Away Her Conviction.” Maxwell argues on her own behalf, having run out of appeals that she did not receive a fair trial when convicted of child sex trafficking in 2021.

Noteworthy is that this summer Maxwell was moved to a minimum-security prison after meeting with Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanch. It is not known whether she provided information in exchange for the transfer. Now, Mother, the prayer hailing your name is used to indicate a last-ditch attempt to avoid responsibility for the one and only person held responsible to date for these horrendous crimes against young girls. Is it more salacious for the Epstein Files to remain secret in conspiracy theories with abusers romanticized, while pieces of flesh are nipped from young girls? Do we care about the conspiracy or the victims?

Mother, I can only look at your humility in times like these. “Stephen Hawking referred to genius as radical humility, pointing out that when we humble ourselves to all we don’t know, we open ourselves to what’s possible.”

I want to reframe your humility as valuable not as a woman looking up from the bottom of the hierarchy, but as radical humility, genius and revolutionary. You saw what was possible for us when you prophesied in the Magnificat, saying, God “has looked with favor on the lowly state of his servant” and “his mercy flows in wave after wave on those who are in awe before him.” You opened yourself up to what seemed impossible and because you did so, we might also create glorious impossibles.

The guilty will be held accountable. The powerful will be brought low. The hungry will be nourished. What is hidden will be uncovered, truth will be set free.

This is the heart of the Incarnation. Mother, you brought God’s own heart into the world to reveal radical love. Your humble words foretell of what is possible for God’s kin-dom — a place where young girls are unharmed, women are wise leaders and every person is equal and beloved.

This Advent, I pray God will bless the bodies and minds of women, embodying within us a humble and glorious hope that can only grow into possibility. Give us words to speak from our lips to hold to account those who refuse to see our value, who refuse to give up their stolen power over us.

Mother, the great things that God has done for you, God will do for us, for we are holy. Amen.

 

This is the fourth in a four-part Advent series “Letters to Mary” by Julia Goldie Day in which the author prayerfully wonders with the mother of Jesus about current events, history, politics and art.

 

Julia Goldie Day is an ordained minister within the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship and lives in Memphis, Tenn. She is a painter and proud mother to Jasper, Barak and Jillian. Learn more at her website or follow her on socials @JuliaGoldieDay.