love

Story: Unbelief

/ Rev. Eric Anderson / 2 Comments

March 31, 2024


Isaiah 25:6-9
John 20:1-18

In the gospel stories about Easter, there’s a common theme. It’s unbelief. People heard – from angels, initially – that Jesus had risen from the dead, and… they didn’t believe them. Later people heard from other people that Jesus had risen from the dead, and they didn’t believe the people. I guess that makes sense. If you don’t believe angels, how likely are you to believe people?

Once there was an ‘apapane who didn’t believe in love.

If that seems hard to believe, well, it was hard to believe. He had been raised with two sisters by attentive parents who fed them well, kept them warm in the rain, and taught them all to sing. They flew with him, they brought him to good trees to find bugs and nectar, and they kept him company when the nights got long and lonely.

But he didn’t believe in love.

You might be thinking that his sisters teased him all the time and that’s why he didn’t believe in love. It’s true. They teased him. But not much, really. More to the point, the teasing didn’t bother him. He teased them back and they all would laugh at the silly things they’d say.

Still, he didn’t believe in love.

“You’re just taking care of me because it keeps the family going,” he told his parents, who really didn’t know what to say about that.

“You’re just good to me because you expect I’ll be good to you,” he told his sisters, and he was good to them, but as he said, it was because he expected them to be good to him.

I suppose it might have been because nearly the entire time since he’d cracked the shell that the skies had been gray, the winds had been cold, and the rain had plummeted down.

I sometimes find it hard to believe in love after too many days of cold, grey, windy rain.

He and his sisters had put in a hard day of nectar- and bug-seeking. There might have been ohi’a flowers in blossom, but they were hard to see in the grey light. The bugs were hiding from the rain, not even troubling to go find nectar to eat. The three siblings huddled for the night on a branch, cold, wet, and hungry.

He was grateful for their warmth but he still didn’t believe in love.

When morning came, he blinked his eyes to an unfamiliar light. The clouds had cleared overnight, and the wind gently rustled the leaves. He and his sisters, all three, stared at the golden light of the sun rising over the trees. As it got higher, the ohi’a blossoms opened in scarlet and gold glory. As it got higher, its warmth dried their feathers.

“Wow,” said the sisters. “What a difference that makes.”

“More than you know,” said their brother. “It’s like a completely different world.”

“Is this a world where you can believe in love?” asked one sister.

He thought about it for a while.

“You know, I think it might be,” he said.

They helped one another get their drying feathers into shape – that’s kind of an ‘apapane hug – and flew off into the sunrise over the glorious bloom of ohi’a.

As they flew, they sang together. You know what they sang?

“I think I believe in love.”

by Eric Anderson

Watch the Recorded Story

https://www.youtu.be/ztIhAl_PYMM?si=l0Oj9aMNpdAtGz_U&t=1056

I write these stories ahead of time, then tell them from memory – memory plus whatever I feel like saying in the moment.

Photo of an ‘apapane by Eric Anderson.

Story: Risky

/ Rev. Eric Anderson / 3 Comments

March 31, 2024

Isaiah 25:6-9
John 20:1-18

You and I are familiar with mynas. They’re all over the place, for one thing. And they have a habit of shrieking at us for no particular reason. Here at Church of the Holy Cross, we’re also used to picking up after them because they try to build nests under the eaves and they’re remarkably bad at doing it.

You and I aren’t so familiar with the Manu-o-Ku, known in other parts of the world as the white tern. They tend to be a little bigger than a myna with longer wings. The myna has brown feathers with black feathers on the head and that distinctive yellow mask around the eyes leading to the bright yellow beak. The Manu-o-Ku is all white except for black eyes and a straight black beak. They don’t live here on Hawai’i Island, but you’ll find them – and mynas – living on O’ahu.

Two mynas were watching a manu-o-ku family prepare for laying an egg, and they were pretty critical about it. I may think mynas build messy nests, but the mynas were surprised that the manu-o-ku didn’t build a nest at all. “Where is the egg going to go?” asked one. “They haven’t done anything about a place to keep it from rolling away,” said the other.

The manu-o-ku ignored all this – they heard it, of course, because mynas aren’t usually quiet. They just flew from branch to branch, checking things out, and didn’t fetch a single piece of grass to build a nest.

Finally they settled onto a spot where a branch forked. It made a little spot with a hollow, like the bowl of a spoon – a very shallow spoon. I don’t think I’d have noticed it, but the manu-o-ku did. Somewhat later, the mynas returned to find that a single egg rested in that little depression, and that the father and mother manu-o-ku were taking turns keeping it warm.

“I’m shocked,” said one of the mynas. “I am, too,” said the other. “That egg is going to fall off.” “And if the egg doesn’t,” said the first, “the chick will.”

The manu-o-ku heard this and said nothing.

About a month later, the egg hatched, and the newborn chick’s feet were able to easily hold onto the forked branch of its nest. The parents brought fish and squid from the ocean to feed it. “That will never work,” said the mynas to one another. “That chick is doomed for sure.”

But it wasn’t. It took its first flight. It stayed nearby and the parents continued to bring it meals. It learned to catch its own food. It took to the skies.

“That shouldn’t have worked,” said the first myna. “It was an awful risk,” said the second.

“It’s a good thing that it worked, then, isn’t it?” called one of the manu-o-ku, and flew away in a flurry of white feathers.

You know, Jesus took a risk when he taught people to love one another, because some people don’t want to do that and they got angry about it. He took a risk when he loved people enough that he didn’t act violently when they came to be violent to him. He took a risk by going to the cross, and that risk took him to the grave. If you want to make things better, those actions shouldn’t work.

Jesus rose from the dead, and suddenly all those actions did work, all those risks of love and of peace and of death itself. It was more precarious than a manu-o-ku egg on a branch, but on that Easter Day love won, and it will always win.

By the way, we have taken a risk this morning. We’ve placed Easter eggs around the church and in a moment we’re going to ask you to find them. The risk is that if you don’t find all the real eggs, in a couple of days of sunshine they’ll get really warm and smelly. So help us out here. Make something good happen for yourself and for all of us. Find those eggs. It will be an Easter risk that worked.

by Eric Anderson

There is no video of this story, which I told before the young people headed out for their Easter Egg hunt. For the record, all the colored boiled eggs were retrieved.

Photo by Duncan Wright – USFWS Hawaiian Islands NWR, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=1167986

Story: Storing Up

/ Rev. Eric Anderson / 1 Comment

November 12, 2023

Amos 5:18-24
Matthew 25:1-13

She was young, young enough that she took a nap every day. She was old enough to think that she didn’t need a nap every day, and she played hard enough that in mid-complaint about taking a nap every day, she’d fall asleep.

It didn’t stop her from complaining about it the next day, but I’m sure I did the same thing when I was that age.

Strangely, it was going to be her first Thanksgiving with a big group of her family. She had been born while her parents were living at quite a distance from grandparents and aunties and uncles and a big crowd of cousins. She’d only met a few of them, and only a household at a time: a couple of grandparents. An auntie and a cousin.

Thanksgiving promised to be a big crowd. She was all excited.

In the couple weeks before Thanksgiving, her parents started buying extra food for the things they’d bring to share: flour and sugar and eggs and pumpkin for pies. “Why are you getting those things?” she asked. “So we’ll have enough to share,” said her parents. “We don’t want to run out, do we?”

Oh, no, we don’t want to run out.

That took a new meaning about a week before Thanksgiving, because as the family was returning from some errands, the car ran out of gas. I guess everything had been so busy that the didn’t pay attention to the gas gauge. It all worked out fine. Some friends brought some gas so they could get to a gas station, and they got home a little later than expected, but it was barely an adventure.

“What happened?” she asked.

“The car ran out of gas,” said mother.

“Is that what happens when you don’t have enough?” she asked.

“It is with a car,” said father.

A couple days later she was all upset and started to cry.

“What’s wrong?” asked father and mother both.

“I don’t want to run out!” she sobbed.

“Run out of what?” they asked.

“I don’t want to run out of love on Thanksgiving!” she wailed.

“How are you going to run out?” asked mother, and she said, “Like the car! Or like falling asleep when I don’t want to nap!”

(I should probably mention that this was happening around nap time, which probably isn’t a surprise.)

“Tell you what,” said father. “We’ll see that you get filled up.”

“What?” she said.

“That’s right,” said mother. “We’ll take time each day to fill you up with love. You’ll have plenty of love for Thanksgiving.”

“How?” she asked, but you probably know the answer. Her parents gave her hugs, and they told her how much they loved her. They praised the cool and clever things she did, and when she misbehaved, they told her they loved her and how to do things better. They played games. They sang songs.

When Thanksgiving came she didn’t run out of love for her grandparents, or her aunties and uncles, or her big crowd of cousins. Nope. She didn’t run out of love at all.

She did skip her nap. She fell asleep in the car on the way home, but I’m sure it was because she was full of pie.

She never ran out of love at all.

by Eric Anderson

Watch the Recorded Story

https://www.youtu.be/b8aa5hhTyco?si=T8jo9H6fIOEOOmES&t=906

I write these stories, then tell them from my memory of what I’ve written. Oh, and I improvise along the way, so what I wrote and how I tell it can be very different.

Photo by Eric Anderson

Story: Love Isn’t Fair

/ Rev. Eric Anderson / 2 Comments

September 24, 2023

Jonah 3:10-4:11
Matthew 20:1-16

He was the oldest of the three ‘amakihi, so he thought he would get everything the first and the best.

In fact, he did get fed first after he’d emerged from the shell and was breathing deeply for the first time. Getting out of an eggshell sounds easy, but he didn’t find it so. Next to him the other two eggs continued to rock and creak for some time as he ate his first bug from his mother’s beak. It tasted wonderful.

I know you and I might not think so, but he thought it tasted wonderful.

Truly, though, he wasn’t born first by much. His sister emerged from her shell within an hour, and his brother was eating his first bug a half hour after that. Still, he was first. And if you’re the first born – um, first hatched – that comes with some benefits, right? First hatched, first fed – at every meal. First hatched, first flight lesson. First hatched, first singing lesson. First hatched, first… well, everything.

But his parents didn’t seem to have learned that rule.

When they came with bugs for their nestlings, they tended to put it in the first handy little beak. Our oldest little ‘amakihi didn’t like it, but in all the chaos of pushing about in the little nest he thought they were just careless and making mistakes. As they grew, he learned to get his beak in place just a little more quickly at mealtimes, but he thought his parents had figured out how to feed him first. And at singing lessons, he didn’t wait for them to say, “Who wants to sing first?” He just sang first.

Flying lessons, though, were different.

Flying, obviously, has to be taken seriously. ‘Amakihi may be small birds, but gravity pulls them just like it pulls you and me. Mother and father didn’t ask for volunteers or pay any attention to his volunteering. They called on the one who was ready, not the one who was eager.

It made him mad.

“That’s completely unfair!” he shrieked one morning when his younger sister took off before he did. He launched himself into the air, flapping madly (and angrily) and not very well, because he wasn’t paying attention to what he was doing, he was paying attention to what he was feeling. He landed rather painfully in a nearby tree and sulked.

The branch jumped a little bit as another bird landed near him. He looked up to see his mother.

“What’s not fair?” she asked.

“It’s not fair for you to teach the others before me. I was born first. I’m always first. I’m always supposed to be first. I’m first!” he said. And he cried angry tears.

She waited until the crying had settled down some, and said, “No, it’s not fair. And it won’t be fair. Not because being born first, you always go first – that’s not true, son, and it’s about time you learned that – but because love isn’t fair.”

It was a shock to hear that he wasn’t always going to be first, but it was more of a shock to hear that love isn’t fair.

“I love everyone in our family equally,” she said. “I love them equally even when they peck at me, like your sister did yesterday, or when they ignore me, like your brother did this morning. I love them equally when your father eats the bug I was following or when your grandmother tells me how to do something that I already know how to do. If I were being fair, I’d love your sister more when your brother annoys me, and I’d love your brother more when your father makes me angry.”

“And you’d love everyone else more when your oldest son gets mad and flies off in a huff,” said her oldest son.

She didn’t have to reply.

“Thank you for not being fair,” he said.

“You’re welcome,” she said. “Now, shall we work on that takeoff? And landing? And paying attention to where you’re going in flight?”

That little ‘amakihi family went right on being unfair – and loving one another each day.

by Eric Anderson

Watch the Recorded Story

https://www.youtu.be/4upTYy4sA3Y?si=EasBcyLu3XSIskZa&t=785

I write these stories ahead of time, then tell the story from memory. Memory plus improvisation, that is.

Photo of an ‘Amakihi by Bettina Arrigoni – Hawaii Amakihi (male) | Palilia Discovery Trail | Mauna Kea | Big Island | HI|2017-02-09|12-21-50.jpg, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=74674240.

Story: Sighing on the Wind

/ Rev. Eric Anderson / 3 Comments

February 12, 2023

1 Corinthians 3:1-9
Matthew 5:21-37

“What is love?” the little girl asked her mother at bedtime, but she fell asleep before she heard the answer.

“What is love?” chirped the coqui frog outside her window.  She slept on.

“What is love?” crowed the rooster, who had no idea what time it was and didn’t care whether he crowed at sunrise or the middle of the night.

“What is love?” sighed the dove, and “What is love?” hummed the saffron finch, and “What is love?” purred the cat lying below them.

“What is love?” The question flew about the island, from creature to creature, from voice to voice. ‘Apapane sang about it on the mountain slopes and noio screeched about it above the waves. Pigs grunted it in their shelters and mongoose chittered it in their burrows.

“What is love?” asked the sheep and the pueo and the nene and the dogs. “What is love?” rumbled the mountain and “What is love?” sighed the clouds.

It was the wind who whispered it into the ear of the ‘io. Whispered it, and whispered it again, until the ‘io took wing and cried with a great voice, “Love is what lifts you up! Love is what carries you! Love is what makes you a home!”

The ‘io cried it, and the wind sighed it. The ‘apapane sang it and the pigs grunted it. The nene honked it and the chickens clucked it.

Outside a little girl’s window, a coqui frog chirped, “Love is what lifts you up. Love is what carries you. Love is what makes you a home.”

She woke suddenly, though whether it was the coqui’s voice that waked her I can’t tell you. “Mama!” she called, and both parents hurried to her room.

“I know what love is!” she said, and her mother said, “But of course. I told you when you asked me:”

And the two said together: “Love is what lifts you up. Love is what carries you. Love is what makes you a home.”

by Eric Anderson

Watch the Recorded Story

In the recording above, the story is told from memory of this text. I had no illusions that I would remember all of the creatures I’d put in the story (or the order), but I remembered more of them than I’d expected!

Story: The Suspicious Noio

/ Rev. Eric Anderson / 2 Comments
July 24, 2022

Genesis 18:20-32
Luke 11:1-13
 
The young noio was hungry pretty much all the time. That’s not all that uncommon for a young noio, of course. He was growing very fast, going from just a little thing at hatching to about the size and weight of an adult in three weeks. At three weeks’ end he weighed six and a half times what he’d weighed when he broke the shell of his egg.
 
So he ate. A lot.
 
You and I wouldn’t find his diet very appetizing, but he certainly thrived on it. His parents would fish in the ocean, slurping down the fish and squid into their bellies. Then they’d go back to the nest, where they’d open their beaks and he’d poke his beak into their mouths. And then, well, the food would return.
 
Yeah, I know. Yuck. I’m glad we don’t do it that way, either.
 
To the young noio, however, this was how it was done. This was the way to eat. This was tasty (I know, yuck) and nutritious and, more than anything else, it was really successful. I mean. Imagine eating enough in three weeks to grow six times your size. That’s impressive.
 
It still took some time for the feathers to grow out and for his wing muscles to develop, so he took his first flight when he was six weeks old. The first flight was a little ragged, but he soon got better. He loved being out in the air, and zooming low over the sea, and coming back to the nest.
 
For some weeks, though, his parents continued to feed him. I know. Yuck. But he had to develop his flying skills before he could develop his food-finding skills. Noio don’t dive into the water to catch food. They fly low over the surface and pluck it from the water.
 
It turns out that for this young noio, that was a problem. He had no problems with the flying skills. But his first reaction to seeing a school of fish in the water below was… Yuck.
 
“That’s what we eat,” said mother.
 
“You have got to be kidding,” said her son. “That’s disgusting. Is there anything else?”
 
“Well,” she said, “there’s muhe’e (that’s squid). Shall we try those?”
 
I know. Squid. Yuck. As it happens, the young noio agreed with us.
 
“That’s even worse!” he said. “I can’t believe I have to spend the rest of my life eating these disgusting things!” He wouldn’t even try to catch one in his beak.
 
Mother and father both tried to persuade him that he should at least try these things, that they really were tasty, and that he’d been eating them without knowing it since he hatched (I know, yuck), but he was not persuaded. He kept feeding the way he’d always known (yuck) and wouldn’t even consider catching a fish.
 
While his parents were out fishing for themselves (and for him) and trying to think of something they could do, tutu came by. His grandmother had been very pleased and proud of him, and her daughter had asked her advice. She came right to the point.
 
“So you think your parents are lying to you?” she asked.
 
“Lying?” he said.
 
“So you think they’d offer you bad food when you’re hungry?” she asked.
 
“Bad food?” he said.
 
“So you think they don’t know how to show you what is good?” she asked.
 
He was silent.
 
“Have they done this before?” she asked.
 
“No,” he said. “Of course not.”
 
“Then why would they do it now?”
 
He said nothing.
 
“Fly with me,” said tutu noio.
 
When his parents got back to the nest, they found grandmother and grandson returned from his first successful fishing trip.
 
“I should have realized you wouldn’t lie to me,” he told them. “Now I know that you didn’t.”
 
by Eric Anderson

Watch the Recorded Story

When recorded, I was delivering the story from a memory of this text – which means they’re not the same. It is distinctive, however, for including the coining of the word, “tentacally,” which sadly, isn’t in the prepared text.

Photo of a noio (black noddy) by Eric Anderson.

Love You!

/ Rev. Eric Anderson / 1 Comment

June 26, 2022

Galatians 5:1, 13-25
Luke 9:51-62

You may have heard people say that kids can get out of hand. You know. Kids jump about. Kids make lots of noise. Kids butt each other with their heads.

Yes. They butt each other with their heads. You don’t do that? Well of course you don’t. You’re not a… Oh. Right. I’m sorry.

When I say “kids” today, I’m not talking about young human beings. I’m talking about young goats. And those kids can definitely get out of hand, jumping about, making lots of noise, and butting each other with their heads.

One kid, however, was a handful even by kid standards – that is, goat kid standards. He was constantly head-butting and foot-kicking and even mouth-biting. Goat kids can get rather rough with one another, but he was rougher than any of them wanted to deal with. Pretty soon he didn’t have any friends in the pasture. If they let him close he’d butt or kick or bite.

He was sad when he got back to his mother. “Why don’t I have any friends?” he asked, and when he’d explained how he behaved with the other kids, his mother thought for a moment.

“If you want friends, you’ve got to love them,” she said.

“Love them?” he asked.

“Love them,” she said.

He thought about this until he fell asleep and thought more about it when he woke up in the morning. He bounced off to the pasture and happily shouted, “I love you!” to the other kids. Then he rushed up to them, butted one with his head, kicked another with his hooves, and bit a third with his teeth, all the while shouting, “I love you!” The herd of kids scattered and he certainly didn’t make any friends.

“Why don’t I have any friends?” he asked his mother that night.

“Didn’t you love them?” she said.

“I tried. But it didn’t work,” he said.

“Tell me what you did,” she said. He did, and when he finished, she sighed.

“Tell me this,” she said. “Do you enjoy it when another kid hits you or kicks you or bites you?”

“Well, not much,” he admitted.

“If I did that, would you believe that I loved you?” she asked.

He wasn’t sure how to answer that.

“Do you think the other kids believe you love them when you butt them and kick them and bite them?” she asked.

“No,” he admitted. “I guess they don’t.”

“Love isn’t just saying it,” said his mother. “Love is doing things because they help someone or help them be well. Love is not doing things because they hurt someone or make them feel bad. So go back tomorrow and try to love them – and this time, show it.”

I won’t claim that he did it perfectly the next day – he didn’t – but he really did show more love for the other kids than he ever had before. As the days passed, he made friends, and they loved him, too.

by Eric Anderson

Watch the Recorded Story

The video includes the complete service of July 26, 2022. Clicking “Play” will jump to the beginning of the story. The recording is of the story told live without notes. It is not the same as the prepared text.

Photo of goats on Maui by Forest & Kim Starr, CC BY 3.0 us, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=70450192.

Surrounded by Air

/ Rev. Eric Anderson / 2 Comments

May 22, 2022

Acts 16:9-15
John 5:1-9

by Eric Anderson

The young noio was confused.

The world was, let’s face it, a fairly confusing place, especially there on the ocean-fronted cliffs of Kamokuna. There’s a lot of wind down there, and that plays with your mind. There’s a lot of noise from the waves breaking against the cliffs, and that’s just distracting. And in addition to the things he felt most of the time – the warmth of his parents’ feathers, the ruffling of his own feathers in the wind, the warm sun of day and the coolness of night – there was the occasional spatter of wind-driven spray.

All that would confuse anyone.

His nest gave him a great view of his world. Perched on a rocky shelf, he could see far off into he distance where the ocean stretched away. He could see the other noio skimming the water’s surface and dipping their beaks in and sometimes diving in briefly before taking off again. As day began the other birds of the colony would take off and begin their fishing above the ocean. As day closed they’d fly back, landing at their nests and bringing food to their young – like him.

What confused him was… flying.

It didn’t frighten him, the way it did some other birds in some other stories I’ve told before. It confused him. He didn’t understand how it could work. He could clearly see that it did, but as far as he was concerned it simply shouldn’t work. How could gravity be so much a force here at the nest and stop being one when a noio had left it? How could his wings flap against nothing and accomplish something? What invisible thing were the other noio grasping – and wings can’t actually grab hold of anything – to change direction like that?

It was terribly confusing.

I don’t really know why he didn’t ask anyone about it. His parents were kind and caring, his grandparents wise and intelligent, all good qualities for someone looking for a good person to answer questions. But he didn’t. He didn’t ask his friends in neighboring nests, and he didn’t ask their parents, either. Maybe he was just trying to work it out himself. I don’t know.

So when the day came to take his first flight, with his parents and grandparents and friends and their families all watching in anxious pride, he was anxious, too. Could he do something he didn’t understand? Was that the magic to flight? But he stretched out his wings, did a hop or two, and the next thing he knew he was off the ledge and moving.

Somehow there was a substance to the nothing he couldn’t see beneath his wings. He could use his wings to shape it and push off from it, and there would be more when his wings came forward again. A subtle adjustment meant a turn. A greater adjustment made a tighter turn.

And since noio are members of the tern family of birds, turn about is fair play.

He flew back to the home ledge and successfully landed with a bit of a flurry of wings and feathers for that first attempt.

“I don’t understand,” he said.

“You don’t understand what?” asked his father.

“I don’t understand how it works. I can see rock. I can see water. But I can’t see what I’ve been flying on.”

“It’s air,” said his mother, “the same air you breathe, the same air in the wind. No, you can’t see it, but it’s there, always there, and it will carry you anywhere you want to go.”

Watch the Recorded Story

This story is not told from the manuscript above, but from a memory of its composition.

Photo by Eric Anderson.

A Song Worth Living

/ Rev. Eric Anderson / 2 Comments

“If I speak in the tongues of mortals and of angels, but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal.” – 1 Corinthians 13:1

They tell me it’s a song, Jesus,
but we’ve lost the tune.

They tell me it’s a song, Jesus,
but we’ve sucked the blood from the words.

They tell me it’s a song, Jesus,
but we’ve forced it into four-four time,
when it was supposed to soar
and warble and hover and dance.

They tell me it’s a song, Jesus.
Hum me the tune.
I want to sing along.

A poem/prayer based on 1 Corinthians 13:1-13, the Revised Common Lectionary Second Reading for Year C, Fourth Sunday after the Epiphany. 

The image is Saint Paul Writing His Epistles by Valentin de Boulogne – Blaffer Foundation Collection, Houston, TX, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=596565.

I’m including my own version of the 1 Corinthians 13 text in a song, “Hymn to Love.”

In Those Days

/ Rev. Eric Anderson / 1 Comment

In those days Mary set out and went with haste to a Judean town in the hill country, where she entered the house of Zechariah and greeted Elizabeth. – Luke 1:39-40

In those days, Luke? Say rather:
“After her imagined life had been upset
by visitation of an angel,
Mary saw the pretenses of life too well,
her friends and loved ones, neighbors, too,
persisting in a sad semblance of ‘normal’
when the love of God was breaking in.

“She fled because her efforts to
acquaint the villagers of Nazareth
with blessing, with deliverance,
were greeted with polite discount,
with blank incomprehension,
silent disbelief, and smirks that smack
of shame and slander.

“She fled because she had no outlet for
the wonder bottled up inside,
no person who would recognize the glory.
Who but one already bearer of
a miracle would comprehend
a miracle before her?

“So in those days she fled. When Mary stood
upon the threshold of Elizabeth, received
a wave of welcome, knew they shared in wonder,
all the pain of others’ disbelief gave way,
and in a flood of tears she praised
magnificent reversal, pride dispersed,
power humbled, humble lifted,
hungry satisfied and wealthy leaving empty.

“For in the shared experience of grace,
they built on love’s foundation,
Mary and Elizabeth, to raise up faith
and hope and joy that others would not see.”

Write that, Luke. It’s what you meant by,
“In those days.”

A poem/prayer based on Luke 1:39-55, the Revised Common Lectionary Gospel Reading for Year C, Fourth Sunday of Advent.

The image is Visit of Mary to Elizabeth by Fr. George Saget, a portion of a larger mural behind the altar of Keur Moussa Abbey in Senegal. Downloaded from Art in the Christian Tradition, a project of the Vanderbilt Divinity Library, Nashville, TN. https://diglib.library.vanderbilt.edu/act-imagelink.pl?RC=56517 [retrieved December 15, 2021]. Digital source photo by Jonas Roux – Flickr [1], CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=4870110.