#annuncation

ANNUNCIATION

Today, the 25th of March, we contemplate The Annunciation (Luke 1:26-38).  Annually, after reading and resting with the above text from Scripture, I snuggle in the invitational words of Denise Levertov.   She invites us to slow down and take a second look at what this eternal moment was like for Mary. The poet  also asks us to take seriously the annunciations in our own lives.

What kinds of annunciations have you experienced? What might be God (Life) announcing to you today? Are you tuned in? How will you respond?

We know the scene: the room, variously furnished, almost always a lecturn, a book; always the tall lily.

Arrived on solemn grandeur of great wings, the angelic ambassador, standing or hovering, whom she acknowledges, a guest.

But we are told of meek obedience. No one mentions courage The engendering Spirit did not enter her without consent. God waited.

She was free to accept or refuse, choice integral to humanness.

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Aren’t there annunciations of one sort or another in most lives? Some unwillingly undertake great destinies, enact them in sullen pride, uncomprehending.

More often those moments when roads of light and storm open from darkness in a man or woman, are turned away from in dread, in a wave of weakness, in despair and with relief. Ordinary lives continue.

God does not smite them. But the gates close, the pathway vanishes.

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She had been a child who played, ate, spelt like any other child – but unlike others, wept only for pity, laughed in joy not triumph. Compassion and intelligence fused in her, indivisible.

Called to a destiny more momentous than any in all of Time, she did not quail, only asked

a simple, “How can this be?” and gravely, courteously, took to heart the angel’s reply, perceiving instantly the astounding ministry she was offered:

to bear in her womb Infinite weight and lightness; to carry in hidden, finite inwardness, nine months of Eternity; to contain in slender vase of being, the sum of power – in narrow flesh, the sum of light.

Then bring to birth, push out into air, a Man-child needing, like any other, milk and love –

but who was God.

This was the minute no one speaks of, when she could still refuse.

A breath unbreathed, Spirit, suspended, waiting.

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She did not cry, "I cannot, I am not worthy," nor "I have not the strength." She did not submit with gritted teeth, raging, coerced.

Bravest of all humans, consent illumined her. The room filled with its light, the lily glowed in it, and the iridescent wings.

Consent, courage unparalleled, opened her utterly.

Poem: “Annunciation” from The Stream and the Sapphire, by Denise Levertov. New York: New Directions Publishing, 1997

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