A person reading yesterday's blog about peeking beneath the Epiphany story of the Three Magi asked me an interesting question, "does everyone know they are on their journey?" I mulled the question for quite awhile and while one answer: all of living is a journey, is an easy response, the reality of our awareness of living our personally unique journey is not easily answered by anyone except our self - and often, the discovery of our own 'yes' is not easy because our journey may seem so ordinary we disregard the purpose of our living.
Although the question came from the Epiphany story, the story that appeared as I mulled the ordinariness of living our journey - our purpose for being alive - was the story of Mary the mother of Jesus. Mary's story - as far as I'm concerned anyway - is one of the most profound of the ancient stories. Yet, despite what I see as extraordinary , most what we are presented as her story is a handful of pretty pictures with her profound living hidden in untold blah, blah, blahs. The angel Gabriel appears, Mary says yes; blah, blah, blah; tells Joseph and then Elizabeth blah, blah, blah; sits on a donkey while 9 months pregnant journeying to Bethlehem, no room, stable, shepherds, choruses of angels, the Kings appear blah, blah, blah and then 33 years later she stands at the foot of a cross where her son has been crucified.
From my perspective the profound story of Mary's journey - her reason for living - was in those 33 years of untold blah, blah, blahs that took her to a place where she had the courage to stand at the foot of the cross and receive the body of her son when it was taken down.
I have often been alternately annoyed and amused that generally Christians acknowledge Jesus as human but as a rule, skip right passed the meaning of being human and head into the theology of his being the Christ - which I might point out did not occur until after he finished his human living. During his 33 years of living, if the stories we tell of Jesus are true and he was in fact God Incarnate: God within human form, this indicates Jesus in fact grew and developed like the rest of we humans. Jesus was an infant, a toddler, a preteen (and capable of being snarky from what I read in the story at the Temple), an adolescent, a young man and finally a man "with a career" - he was Rabbini: a teacher -and, as a matter of fact, a politically rabble-rousing teacher.
The important point here in noting Jesus' humanness is that someone had to help him become. Mary, Jesus' mother was not a 'holy' uterus: Mary was the woman who brought Jesus into being and supported him into his becoming. Becoming is what human beings do as the means to growing in order to embrace their person in it's wholeness of personality and giftedness and then answer a Call for living which is evoked from this embrace. It was Mary who raised Jesus the human being: taught, disciplined, explained, praised, disciplined and supported the person of Jesus in order that he might embark upon his journey. What an amazing story! Mary's amazing story of living.
And this amazing story of living is not told partially because religion skips over Jesus' humanness but also not told because it appears so ordinary - ordinary because it is our story - our story of living our days nurturing and sustaining and thus, growing, what we love. Yet, as each of us with even a little bit of awareness knows, the willingness to grow love is not an easy journey despite it's ordinariness, as growing love demands us to learn how to respond to something much bigger than the wants and desires of our singular self. It is this learning that defines our journey of living from the purpose of our life.
There is a single line in the bible story of the visitation of the Magi (I think it's in John) which offers a glimpse into not only Mary's story of living, but is also the key to our living: 'and she pondered these things in her heart.' As I read those simple words, my own heart contracts in empathy for I get it: I get the pondering, the wondering, the contemplating - the hope {often tinged with human fear}- that I have seen what I need to see and then placed this moment of awareness within my heart so that I might do what I need to do - that I might learn what is needed in order to live the purpose of my life.
It is what we ponder and tuck into our hearts that creates our journey for it is these 'tucked away' awarenesses from which we make choice - and is our choices in living defining our journey. It takes great courage to choose to live from our heart. The 'world' will tell us that what is important, is outside of our heart. But the counterpoint to that view is why Mary's story begins with the Angel Gabriel: this story shows us her saying 'yes' to living from her heart. Yet, her yes and our yes is simply the beginning of living - one moment to tuck into the heart - and like Mary, most of our living from this yes, will be so ordinary, no one even thinks it is the story.
Yet, if we, like Mary say our yes, tuck it into our heart, ponder the experiences of our heart and then go about responding to what happens in our day in the the best way we are capable of, then quite possibly we are living the same story as Mary: nurturing, nourishing, sustaining and growing love. Which is, a rather extraordinary story.
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