Christmas reflection on the Virgin Mary

My appreciation for Mary is slowly growing. Its difficult to overcome my inherent protestant fears of this mysterious figure of the Gospel, but the symbolic and spiritual weight of her character in the gospels I can no longer ignore. There are a number of views that seem to be particularly fruitful foci for understanding Mary in light of her uniqueness.

First, there is the view of  Mary as mother of mankind, an angle which plays up her singularity as the mother of the Christ.  It can not be denied that Mary is the vessel by which the first Man makes His way into the world; before this there existed only shadows of man, which were themselves shadows of Man.  Strange and wonderful, then, is Mary, whose DNA was to provide source of the Messiah's genetic code (Though I'm not sure what I think of the historical credibility of the virgin birth, it is nonetheless interesting to speculate that Jesus' genetic code would be, if the virgin birth is factual, solely based on Mary's patterns.  I wonder, then, how many times he heard, "you favor your mother" :)).  What does it mean for Mary to be the mother of mankind?  There are extreme positions: one makes this fact a justification for her apotheosis via religious ritual practices, the best example being the recitation of the Rosary, varying in spiritual significance from community to community, the other minimizes this fact to the point of nonexistence.  What is a healthy understanding?     Not sure, something to think about.

 
Second, there is the view of Mary as a unique physical symbol of the Christian's spiritual reality as well as a call to all mankind.  This view of Mary I heard recently in a homily given during a catholic funeral for my great Aunt.  It seemed new to me at the time, but upon reflection I realized I heard it before in the last verse of the traditional Christmas song, "O Little Town of Bethlehem," which begins,

"O little child of Bethlehem,
descend to us we pray,
cast out our sin and enter in,
be born in us today."    

In these few lines we see articulated the perpetual rebirth of Jesus in the new Christian's heart.  Mary was, in fact, the first Christian.  She opened her womb to the Messiah, accepting, quite literally, the Christ.  Interestingly, she does not accept this weight with a mere 'yes'.  Rather, she says, "Behold, I am the servant of the Lord; let it be to me according to your word."   Her acceptance is in the form of a declaration that she is and will be a servant of the Living God.  One might argue that the acceptance of Christ is much more complicated than a simple agreement to live as the servant of God, but I'm not convinced that it is anything more than that.  Of course, there is the forgiveness of sins going on somewhere in the background, but, in essence, Jesus' gospel is a call to enter into the Kingdom of God as a servant, to have the will of God played out in one's life and to bring about the will of God in the lives of others.  Thus, Mary's acceptance of the Messiah is a physical symbol of the spiritual event that takes place in a new Christian.  Christ is born in the heart of a man or woman and then matures and grows in him or her till He bursts forth from them as light, love, and truth.  Christ's birth and growing in a Christian is not parasitical, being a kind of possession or take-over, but rather synergistic, uniting God and man mysteriously resulting in the new, complete Man.  Christ's explosion out of a person is seen in the self-actualization of the person and his or her highest expression of innate self for the benefit of others and the glory of God.  Mary is the physical symbol for this event, but, in being so, she is also more.  In the same way the story of those who have experienced this ultimate spiritual event serves as testimony and a call to others, so does Mary stand as a physical testimony and a call to all men and woman—will you too 'prepare Him room' in your heart and accept the call to enter into the Kingdom of God as a servant? 

There are other views of Mary that are worth discussing, but that's all I have the energy to write about right now (Mary as a paranormal phenomena, Mary is a cultic object of worship, Mary as the goddess of Christianity,  etc.).  There are some great essays and works of art that make highly idiosyncratic symbolic uses of Mary that would be worth a look if you're interested and which have contributed to my growing interest in her as a figure.  To name a few,  the film director Godard, if I remember correctly, held her in high esteem, discussed her from time to time and made a movie about her;  Octavio Paz has a great chapter in his book, El Laberinto de la Soledad [The Labyrinth of Solitude] , in which he discusses her role in Mexican Catholicism; Sion Sono's, a terrific Japanese director, recent film, Love Exposure, uses Mary as a central motif as well as various other Christian symbols throughout in fascinating ways; Chris Ofili's has a terrific Mary painting that caused a lot of controversy (seen above);  Bresson's Journal d'un curé de campagne [Diary of a Country Priest] contains some great material as well.                  

P.S. In an increasingly visual age, my passions and loves feel more and more obsolete and shabby (the written word in its many forms and practices...).  I want to write a eulogy in the form of a book to the recent passing of the Word to help me properly mourn.

I'm going to regret posting this later

An Attempt to Tip the Scales
Bright Eyes

Did you expect it all to stop at the wave of your hand?
Like the sun's just gonna drop if it's night you demand.

Well, in the dark we're just air, so the house might dissolve.
But once we're gone, who's gonna care if we were ever here at all?

Well, summer's gonna come, it's gonna cloud our eyes again.
No need to focus when there's nothing that's worth seeing.

So we trade liquor for blood in an attempt to tip the scales.
I think you lost what you loved in that mess of details.
They seemed so important at the time
but now you can't even recall any of the names, faces, or lines.
It's more the feeling of it all.

Well, winter's gonna end, I'm gonna clean these veins again.
So close to dying that I finally can start living.

I listened to a lot of Bright Eyes my senior and junior year of high school. In college I more or less stopped because I got fed up with Connor Oberst's self-pity. Yesterday I found an old burned copy of Fevers and Mirrors in my bedroom cd caseand decided to give it a spin in the good ol' car stereo for old times sake. Expecting to be embarrassed that I had once listened to this album religiously, I played the first couple of tracks and to my surprise thoroughly enjoyed them.

I'm not sure whether to attribute this enjoyment to the simply explosion of pleasure that occurs when you re-encounter a old, loved object or person or to the intrinsic worth of the music itself. I'm leaning towards the former (Evidence: I recently listen to and enjoyed the early Offspring album, Smash). Oberst's music always gave me huge emotional highs in high school and much to my surprise it did once again today. I'm not sure why. It used to awaken my imagination and, almost magically, did so again today. In spite of his many flaws, Oberst can pen a decent song, whose primary strength are the communicate of an ineffable sense of, well, feeling. While that may seem stupid or trite, for INFPers like myself, its huge (Feeling is crack cocaine for an INFPer). Because O'berst songs avoid, for the most part, musical and lyrical predictability, they're good for multiple listens, faithfully giving heavy doses of emotional excess to hungry teenage souls.

The above song is from the second to last track on Fevers and Mirrors. I listened to it multiple times in the car today because I kept wanting to hear the lines "summer's gonna come..." and "winter's gonna end..." I want 'summer' to come cloud my eyes.

[if I were 18 again I could justify writing this post, being 23 makes this embarrassing)

If you decide to listen to this song, I would suggest not listening to the interview.