Advent 3A

Mary.

I instantly see sky blue....somewhere in the back of my imagination....when I hear the name " Mary".

Probably because of her cloak. It's a really saturated, "Maxwell Parish", October sky blue. My poet friend Aliki (alikibarnstone), who is half Greek, told me that blue, Mary-blue, and also that cobalt blue, decorates all houses in Greece. It is a powerful thing that wards away evil. The evil-eye. (I still don't really know the concept of the eye...just that you don't want it on you.) so blue is a protection from that which is bad and can harm you. And, of course, that is confusing because to "be blue" is...well...not a good thing, and if it leads to depression and suicide....well, that seems pretty evil. To sing the blues is sort of in the middle....it can go either way....you either sing and get get it out of your system and feel happy again, or you just keep on singing the blues forever....or until you can't take it anymore.

So Mary got a complicated colour.

Which works because she is complicated. She comfortably fills in the spaces that the goddess has left.

She's like everyone's best imagination of a mom.

She's either human in it's most perfect imagining....or perfect in that she's just a little edgey.

She is not scary, though. Not for me.

Somehow, if I woke to find an angel standing at the foot of my bed, I would be screaming and clawing with terror...

But if Mary was standing there, in her blue cloak, I think I would be OK. I would feel really blest even.

Go figure.

It's like there's a part of me that "gets" why God chose her to carry Godself. Good choice!

She's like the best of grandma, mom, and girlfriend wrapped into one....which brings her right back to the goddess! She is the teenage girl pregnant mysteriously, she is the broken weeping mother at the foot of the cross, she is the one gently pressuring the miracle at Cana, she is the one we think of when Paul McCartney sings "Let it Be" (his deceased mother was also named Mary....so there's that...but anyway)

She is as real or as cosmic as we need.

But she does comfort. The quintessential maternal duty. 

On this pink-candle lighting Sunday, we think of Mary. Maybe it should be a blue candle....the blueness that surrounds her is somewhat ineffable...but the candle for the day is special. It's pink. And she was the carrier of God.

Just as Creator being created has reset all creation, God's choice of her has certainly reset her!

Deified her.

Mary. The Mother of God! God has done great things!