“Life doesn’t come with a manual, it comes with a mother.” — Cleophus (Cleo) Franklin Jr.
Not too long ago my family and I were sitting in a booth at a local restaurant waiting for our food to arrive. I had taken notice of the young family in the booth across from us, a family with a mother and a father and two young girls. Suddenly the man slams his hand down on the table loudly and presses his face close to the children and says in a stern, loud voice, “This is the behavior we have been talking to you about!” while the mother looks on without saying anything.
Julia Goldie Day
I’m a little startled by the noise and following outburst and say, “What the f***?” a bit too loudly, and while my husband tries to shush me, I say, “That’s abusive.”
I know they have heard me, but they pretend they did not, and we all go back to paying attention to our own families. I know from experience trying to report behavior like this and worse to Child Protective Services will result in no response. Yet, I grieve that this behavior is normalized, acceptable for women and children to be treated in this way. I’m sure my language would get more criticism than the man’s behavior from some. Believe me, my mother is cringing reading this!
However, behavior from men like I describe above, and worse, is acceptable if it is directed toward women and children and others with less power. White straight men get a pass because abuse is baked into the patriarchal hierarchy system where women, children and others with less power must submit for the system to stay intact.
In this harmful system, women must be silent and relinquish power. Women must submit to the will of men even if they know in their hearts the men are doing wrong.
Quiet submission is not what God required of Mary. She was not the silent passive type.
“I Feel This Shining” by Julia Goldie Day
Mary was powerful. Green with power. Virile.
My favorite color is green, always has been. It is also my mother’s favorite color. Green is the seed that grows to produce spring. It is fertile. It is powerful with potential for new life. I return to green on my pallet to paint so often, it never fails to bring me life.
Not only was Mary able to produce a child without another human but with God, she produces new life with her own living, her greenness grows love.
This fertility of her love mothers us all, calls us to life.
This powerful, fertile woman was innately intuitive. At the Annunciation, Mary is quick to question with intelligence what the angel presents to her; and while Zechariah is punished for his doubt with forced silence when told of the forthcoming birth of his child, Mary is rewarded for her intuitive questioning with agency and a platform for her voice. She travels by her own decision to her relatives Elizabeth and the silenced Zechariah and receives further confirmation from another mother of the holy and miraculous nature of her role.
She is blessed as she responds with faith when invited to participate in God’s plan. Mary’s voice prompted Elizabeth’s baby to leap in her womb. Elizabeth explains it as a leap of joy. It is no small thing the voice of Mary goes on to sing of praise to God with echoes from old, as Miriam prophesized and praised God after the crossing of the Red Sea. These powerful words from Mary’s lips bloom with possibility, with promise for mercy, welcome and goodness for all.
We know from the Scriptures Mary was not only quick-thinking but deeply thoughtful. She ponders all these things in her heart. She stores away the amazing and joyous happenings of the Nativity as if she will need to rely on the divine love she saw poured out into the world as she anticipates her family facing the injustices of the world. Her heart must have been hurt, heavy and sore from being pierced by thorns many times.
“The Flight into Egypt” by Guido of Siena, 1280. (Wikimedia)
“She does, like countless millions have done before and since, the simply profound, steady work of motherhood, and she does it like countless millions have done before and since, under the threat of death. Matthew’s (gospel) narrative leads his readers to contemplate how terrifying it must have been to bear and raise this child,” says Amy Peeler in Woman and the Gender of God.
Mary may have been afraid, but she is fierce in her mothering.
Her heart and soul may be sore, but she is a rose with thorns.
These thorns warn us to be careful with her buds, her blooms, her young. She is not to be trifled with. She protects herself and her young with a prickly fierceness despite her beautiful appearance. Nature has its means of surviving, and roses have survived this way for millions of years.
Over Thanksgiving I asked my mother-in-law to tell us the story of her family rose bush. “Uncle Grover” is as “mean as the devil” in her words, named after a disliked family member. He will reach out and get you if you aren’t careful cutting grass or weeding nearby. I can attest to the large thorns and long reach of “Uncle Grover.” He’s no looker for sure, as he’s a “runner” with long thick and sturdy branches, scary thorns and unimpressive white blooms with a yellow center. His one redeeming quality is his fragrance. The aroma is gorgeous. If you risk the thorns to get to the roses, they smell heavenly.
“The in-breaking of the kingdom of God that was ushered in with Christ was no passive event. The incarnation of Christ was an earthquake like disruption reaching from heavenly to earthly orders all the way into human hearts,” says Jennifer Powell McNutt in The Mary We Forgot.
“The Virgin Adoring the Sleeping Christ Child,” by Botticelli, 1485. (Wikimedia)
So, I must ask, do we believe in the inbreaking of the incarnation or not?
When we erase the female embodiment, the voices and bodies of women from the Scriptures, we make it unalive.
We become useless, powerless. Roses pulled up by their roots from the garden.
The word will not be with us. Without the respect and dignity of women there will be no roses, thorns and all. We will have ignored the warnings the thorns are meant to provide us with.
There will be no birth of the Word within us. Jesus is not born. This living Word is dead, the seed of the Tree of Life in the rose garden never was planted.
We must acknowledge roses have thorns. Ripping Mary from the story, from her primary place in our Advent preparations, leaves us with scars deep in our hurting hearts.
Like the fairy tale of the princess who grew flowers wherever her feet touched the ground, we can imagine the feet of Mary walking the earth, awakening the garden that grows roses beneath her feet. Wherever she walks, roses grow. The incarnate Word within her body manifests the divine.
Benjamim Cremer points out, “‘Biblical manhood’ according to the Christmas story looks like witnessing how central women are to the movement of God in the world and not feeling threatened by that reality.”
We can wonder at the beauty and joy of the astonishing female way God came among us.
So how can we be born again as incarnational people?
With thorny roses held gingerly in our hands?
“Wild Roses” by Van Gogh. (Wikimedia)
The Word leads to the door of a secret garden. Will we have the courage to walk over the threshold to see the flora within?
“At the garden tomb, Mary Magdalene becomes a type of new Eve paired with the Virgin Mary in bringing a message of new life. The three serve as touchstones in God’s unfolding saga of redemption from creation to the incarnation to the Cross and resurrection, though many more women contribute to this arc as well,” says Jennifer Powell McNutt.
Is it not our work to cultivate this rose garden of new life even though the pathways to it may be thorny? The divine birth brought about through Mother Mary is creative labor for us as well. Now we are creators with the divine in ways we were not before because of the divine dwelling among us. Here is the burn, the thorn — it is up to us as creators now we have oneness within what God promised by Jesus in the Gospel of John. Incarnate people live as if we are the ones who do the work of co-creators, for we have been transformed. We are forever being reborn in love. The child is us, begotten of God.
“Every knee shall bow to every human person,” says Bruno Barnhart.
We might feel this goes a bit too far. But if we are the branches on the vine as Jesus teaches us, are we not able to bloom roses bright colors, fragrant and joyful? It is life-giving and it is terrifying. It reminds me of mothering.
The baby born to the woman Mary will wear a crown of thorns. This crown will transform into a crown of roses, and we sing,
Joy to the world! for Love is come: let earthly praises ring!
Let every heart prepare ye room,
No more let sins and sorrows grow,
Nor thorns infest the ground;
Love comes to make the blessings flow
Far as the curse is found, far as the curse is found,
Far as, far as the curse is found!
Love fills the world with truth and grace! And all creation proves
The glories of this righteousness,
And wonders of this love, and wonders of this love,
And wonders, wonders of this love!
(lyrics revised by Tallessyn Z. Grenfell-Lee)
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.
Further resources inspired by themes from “Mary the Rosebud” will be provided by the author at juliagoldieday.comeach week. Click for poetry, prayers, music and more art to inspire you this season of Advent.
Previously in this series: