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| Our fourth Advent candle is lit |
I have also decided to continue writing through the Twelve Days of Christmas and the whole of Christmastide, which lasts until Candlemas on February 2nd. We are quite justified in leaving our decorations up until then so don't let anyone tell you otherwise!
Here in the hedgehermitage we have adopted a tradition of burning the evergreens from our Christmas wreaths at Candlemas, which is a lovely way to end Christmastide and wake up the year. And the period from Christmas to Candlemas is forty days, mirroring both Celtic Lent and the Lent preceding Easter. To claim this time back in any small way is part of the Beautiful Resistance. It's loss is due either to the Industrial Revolution or to the dictates of the Church-as-Institution, both of which have sought to control us for their own benefit. We can resist in all manner of ways, and what could be more symbolic than reclaiming the deep winter and decorating our homes with evergreens until the light truly returns, not just until Boxing Day or Twelfth Night?
But, first, it feels right to end Advent properly. The last week, or few days, of Advent introduces us to an intensely female space populated by Mary and, in this land, by the Welsh Mari Lwyd, both travelling by starlight. That they become more prominent now, in the dark womb of the year, seems right. We are waiting for a birth after all. And so it is meaningful indeed that the fourth candle in the Advent Crown is dedicated to Love and to Mary; she who gives birth to Hope, and to a wild and radical resistance whose light has continued burning for two thousand years.
On the night of the UK Election, when it became clear that all hope was gone, it was Mary's defiant song, the Magnificat that repeated in my head; "From henceforth, all generations shall call me blessed." To claim our blessings in such dark times is a wild resistance indeed. And, heartbreakingly, "S/he HAS filled the hungry with good things and sent the rich away empty." This is my prayer.
Some, particularly those who know my history, wonder why I now go to church and call myself a Christian, although I still find labels divisive and unhelpful. Mary and her Magnificat are a big part of that, because here is a faith that, far from being apart from the world, embraces it, a faith that, at its best, when it finds injustice, 'goes towards' it rather than turning away. It is written almost into its atoms that it should be so. Here is a faith of 'God embodied', present in human form, and not just human but radical, subversive form, standing against Empire and oppression, standing alongside the most vulnerable and oppressed, identified with and one of them. A wounded healer. As someone pointed out on Twitter just the other day, Jesus rejected the 'worthy'; those with both secular and religious power and, instead, chose to spend his time with thieves and sex workers; homeless, victimised, shining like the sun.
And here in the Magnificat is his mother; a young woman, a teenager, declaring her defiance. This is not the Mary, meek and mild, that we have been sold by the modern institutional church. This is Mary calling for revolution; the World Turned Upside Down.
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| Mary by Ben Wildflower |
A friend once told me that she had 'found a guru' and had been instructed to rid herself of her anger in order to truly follow her spiritual path. What does this mean in a world of injustice? I want no part of a spiritual path like that. I know that I wouldn't find Mary there.
Mary’s ‘Magnificat’, found in Luke 1: 46-55, is the longest set of words spoken by any woman in the New Testament’ and considered by many to be deeply subversive. It was Mary’s spontaneous response to being declared ‘blessed’ by Elizabeth, who at that time was pregnant with John the Baptist. One might suggest that it was subversive enough for two such strong women to take centre stage in such deeply patriarchal times, but there are so many layers to this story.
It is believed that Mary was barely a teenager when she became pregnant with Jesus, and that Elizabeth was likely to have been more than sixty years old, certainly well past child bearing years. For women of such different ages to call one another friend and confidant as equals is subversive indeed. And Mary’s song of blessing is not one of simple joy; it is threaded through with fear; the fear of a young girl, unmarried and pregnant at a time when to be so risked social ostracism and humiliation. Indeed, under Jewish law, she was at risk of stoning for adultery.
Even in that context, she sings for hope, defiant in the face of danger. It is this defiance which caused the Magnificat to become a “radical resource for those seeking to honour the holy amongst the conflicts and suffering of real life.” (Rev. Carolyn Sharp). It has often become a source of strength for those on the margins who have struggled for liberation. Indeed, from the 1970s in South America, despite the authorities presenting her as an image of piety, Mary became Maria Libertadora, Mary the Liberator, an extremely powerful and important symbol of revolution.
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| Mary the Revolutionary https://marcuscurnow.wordpress.com/2012/11/27/a-revolutionary-hail-mary/amp/ |
During British rule of India the Magnificat was banned from being sung in church. Dietrich Bonheoffer, who was executed by the Nazis in 1945 having worked for the German resistance movement, was deeply devoted to Mary. In a sermon given at Advent in 1933 he said, “The song of Mary is the oldest Advent hymn. It is at once the most passionate, the wildest, one might even say the most revolutionary Advent hymn ever sung.” In Guatemala in the 1980s the fascist Government banned its recitation considering it to be ‘too dangerous’.
During Argentina’s ‘war’ against political dissidents, the ‘Mothers of the Disappeared’ placed Mary’s challenging words on posters all over the capital plaza and the display of her song was subsequently outlawed by the military junta. And, of course, Mary too understood the pain of the loss of a child.
More recently, in 2012 Russian all female punk band, Pussy Riot, became famous when they invaded the Cathedral of the Holy Saviour in Moscow and sang a protest song against Vladimir Putin's re-election. The song they sang was a prayer to Mary. Part of the lyrics translate as, "Mother of God, you're a feminist, come and help us. We know you're with us in our protest. Holy Mary, drive Putin away..."
Mary sings of the ‘world turned upside down’, of a time when the “rulers will be brought down from their thrones”, “the humble will be lifted up”, and “filled with good things” as the “rich are sent away empty”. These are themes which often rise in our midwinter traditions. The Mari Lwyd, or Grey Mare, of South Wales, and our soul caking and wassailing traditions, ensure the same sharing of resources from rich to poor. We also have customs such as the ‘Lord of Misrule’, who was often a peasant chosen by lot to preside over Christmastide festivities ~ a reminder that the social hierarchy was maintained by consent, rather than by right. I think that it would be of benefit for some amongst us to be reminded of that now.
Last September I heard Jeffrey John, the Dean of St Albans Cathedral, speak on Mary. One of his subjects was 'Mary the Revolutionary'. As an illustration of the long tradition of relating to Mary as rebel he quoted his favourite Mary poem, written by Mary Coleridge in 1900.
MOTHER of God? No lady thou!
But common woman of common earth;
'Our Lady' ladies call thee now.
But Christ was never of gentle birth;
A common man of the common earth.
For God's ways are not as our ways:
The noblest lady in the land
Would have given up half her days,
Would have cut off her right hand,
to bear the child that was God of the land.
Never a lady did God choose
Only a maid of low degree
So humble she might not refuse.
The carpenter of Galilee:
A daughter of the people, she.
Mary sang the song of het heart.
Never a lady had so sung.
She knew no letters, had no art;
Yet to all mankind in woman's tongue
Hath israelitish Mary sung.
And still for men to come she sings
Nor shall her singing pass away:
He hath filled the hungry with good things -
and the rich he hath sent empty away."
( Mary Coleridge)
It seems fitting then that Advent ends as dusk falls on Christmas Eve and darkens into a night that was once known as Mõdraniht; Night of the Mothers or Mothers' Night, a vigil held by Anglo-Saxon Pagans and attested to in the 8th Century by the Venerable Bede. Although this was not a Christian festival we could choose to deepen into the way in which this night celebrating the female ancestors and the Mother Goddesses of Old Europe resonates with the story of Christmas. We might all then sit in vigil and contemplate and support those who bring light to birth in the winter dark.
And remember too that, unlike the linear ideas of Conservatism and its ilk which feed from a well that can only run dry, these radical ideas of fairness, of equality, and of justice espoused by Christ, and so many others, are reborn and renewed every year in an endless cycle. A prophet who speaks truth to power, a troublemaker, a king who refuses an earthly crown, he will be cut down until we learn to do better, until we give up our scapegoating and our crowning with thorns. And for Christ's sake, for Mary's, and for our own, I hope that we do that soon, but, for now, rejoice that the Prince of Peace has been born again, vulnerable, fragile, all too human, and luminous with Hope.
This Advent has been a powerful journey for me because it has taught me about longing (and the loss that goes with it). From singing 'O, Come Emmanuel' on a Dover roundabout to welcome refugees in a hostile world, to repeating the Magnificat as a little raft to cling to on the night of the Election when it felt that everything vulnerable was thrown under the wheels of endless greed, I have learned that longing is where hope and despair collide, and it is the hope that keeps us singing.
Advent has ended. Christmastide is here!
References:
Jeffrey John at Southwark Cathedral, 12th September, 2019.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary,_mother_of_Jesus
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnificat
https://marcuscurnow.wordpress.com/2012/11/27/a-revolutionary-hail-mary/amp/
https://www.newstatesman.com/religion/2010/12/jesus-god-tax-christ-health
https://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/us_13854296
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mōdraniht
