Passion Voices: Mary

What? 

Who moved the stone? What's going on here?

It's not enough, I suppose, that we watched him suffer and die. It's not enough that every nail was pounded into my heart, that every lash of the whip tore my soul apart.

Now they've taken his body too!

What kind of low-life lunatic would do such a thing? We have nothing left except the comfort of giving him a proper burial. There was no time on Friday. They barely got him to the tomb before Sabbath began. 

And what a strange and silent Sabbath it was. Yesterday I could feel nothing at all. Not the warmth of the sun, not even the pain of my grief. Not the sweet Spirit of God which has sustained me since the day I met him. 

The world went on as always, as if nothing had happened. And even God was silent.

Don't you understand? He was everything to me. Everything. He's the only one who ever looked at me as if I were a real person. Not a harlot. Not an outcast. But as if I were a daughter of the Most High.

I hate the silence.  Never to hear his wonderful stories. Never to hear his prayers. Never to hear the sound of my name on his lips--the sweetest sound I ever heard. The only voice I want to hear is the one I can never hear again.

Here's the gardener. I'll ask him if he knows anything. Maybe he saw something. Maybe he knows who did this. How did they move the stone? Where is my Lord? Where is my. . .

Jesus?

Photo Credits:
    Entombment of Christ, by  anonymous Russian icon painter

    Easter Morning, painting by Johann Friedrick Overbeck

Ban the Butterflies!

We don’t need any more children’s books about seasons changing or caterpillars turning into butterflies.

That was the gist of a blog post I read recently. And I think I get what this guy is saying—that children’s writers could try looking around for some new material. And I agree.

Sort of.

But I can’t help thinking that if you get jaded to the miracle of changing seasons or of earthbound worms sprouting wings, maybe you shouldn’t write for children. Maybe you shouldn’t write for anybody. 

The cycle of the seasons and the metamorphosis of caterpillars both echo the theme of death and resurrection at the heart of the Master Story, the story at the root of all stories. Death and Resurrection are the climax of the mythic hero’s journey, as described by Christopher Vogler in The Writer’s Journey. Over and over we die to an old way of life--or an old way of thinking--and we are reborn into a new awareness, a new understanding.

May I never cease to be amazed by simple things. Like soap bubbles. Or dandelion fluff. Or spider webs. Or snow. May I never stop seeing the numinous in the ordinary. May I never forget that all beans are magic beans. Or in the words of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, “Earth’s crammed with heaven and every common bush afire with God.”

So maybe we don’t need more original subject matter--just new ways of telling the “old, old story.” We need a fresh voice, a fresh slant, a fresh pair of eyes.

And now that I think about it, we need more books about seasons and butterflies. Lots more.

EPILOGUE: a question for my readers--both of you.

What simple, everyday things fill you with wonder and awe?