Tuesday Prayer for 12/10/13: Mary

(This is a prayer I wrote for 12/6/11.  It was on the tail end of the Occupy moment and at there were similar uprisings occurring in Russia, at the time.)

Inspired by Isaiah 1:46-55

God of Mary the Teenager,

God of the Let-Down and Lowly,

God of the Filled-up Hungry and the emptied rich;

We have been waiting for you.

We have been longing for you.

We have been hoping for you.

Some things are not quite right.

This world of ours is off-kilter - spinning all wobbly – and it seems like some

are falling

off.

The impoverished are being flung off in to the outer darkness as others laugh at the spectacle of it all.  Children are choking on the air.  Greed is being celebrated as a Darwinian virtue.  Love is being criminalized.  We keep finding new ways to be violent.

Why should we complain, though? Where is our thankfulness?  We are here, in this safe place, right? We are here, in this safe place, right?  We are here in this safe place, right?  It is safe here.  We are fed.  It is safe here. We are safe with these fences around us, right?  They are here to keep others out, right?  They keep out the wildness.  They keep us safe, like cattle.

Much safer than a world where God is held in belly of some teenage girl with, likely, brown skin and, likely, dark hair who is, likely, poor.  Much safer than a world where God scatters the proud and deposes the powerful and calls this “mercy.”  Much safer than a world where God seems so small you need a soul like a magnifying glass to make God bigger.

Oh God, help me. I am so impatient and so tired.  Fling open the cynical squint of my eyes in the midday and, then, help my fearful eyes close in the middle of the night.

“Be not afraid,” you say… 

I am finding this difficult, I confess…

Help me look in to the eyes of that pregnant, teenaged girl and be in awe of her certainty; her assuredness; her excitement.  Help me to sing along with her like it’s a lullaby; like it's a hip-hop rhyme; like it’s a protesting, marching chant.

“FOR THE MIGHTY ONE HAS DONE GREAT THINGS FOR ME!!!!!!!”  May I yell it like one of those deep belly yells that makes my throat ache.

(For the Mighty One has done great things for me…) May I whisper it over and over again like a mantra.

And, then, maybe…  Just, maybe…

Justice will roll down like

Mary’s

breaking

water…

Amen.