By Sarah Graham
She gazes, transfixed
On Him.
On Him, whose umbilical cord
Still pulses with her blood.
Whose lips pucker, rooting,
Head bobs, searching.
He, whose Word
Made her.
She, whose womb
Formed him.
Her body shakes:
It is finished.
He drinks of her
To live.
Her eyes shine,
Alive.
His eyes close,
Satisfied.
She reaches for his hand –
His fingers clasp around her one.
She traces each knuckle,
Studies his nails.
She strokes his back,
Still streaked with her blood.
She leans forward
To kiss his cheek.
Her eyes flit shut,
Deep inhale
As she draws him in,
His skin against hers.
She leans back,
Eyes on Heaven,
Heaven on her chest.
Her love foretells
His love for us.
—
I wrote this poem as I was having a tea party with my two-year-old, my newborn was sleeping and my other two children were at school. As I wrote on the beautiful, sacrificial presence of the mother Mary, my own presence toward my two year old waned and the tea party devolved to goldfish crumbs all over the ground. The work of a mother is sanctifying, humbling, messy, monotonous, holy and almost wholly hidden. It is easy for me to get bogged down by its drudgery, fall into short temperedness, and lose perspective.
This Advent I began reflecting on how our normal life had to resume rather quickly this fall after our son was born. This was disorienting to me – his birth was not just a blip within our day to day life – an interesting occurrence that happened over a weekend. No, his birth, his life, suddenly became all that mattered. His birth changed me. His birth changed our family. I couldn’t simply keep talking about tennis, first grade recess, preschool snacks and other matters of great import as if nothing had changed. Everything had changed. I began to wonder if Mary felt that way after giving birth to Jesus – how could life continue on as normal for others? Only
with Mary, she held and beheld the one whose life really did change everything. Mary experienced the birth that pierced through time, that restored creation both before and to come. A historical event and also a moment that stands outside of time. My son’s birth, under very different circumstances, in a hospital attached to pitocin – was yes, one moment in time, but it too was also an eternal moment. A person destined for eternity entered this world. I think even in the most ‘ordinary’ of births we enter into the miracle of the incarnation, or at least catch a glimpse of the full miracle that Mary participated in – heaven coming to earth in the form of a
baby.
Reading through Luke 2, I began imagining Mary’s first moments holding baby Jesus – the most intimate, sacred and raw moments I have ever experienced. I imagined her looking in his face, her heart expanding, treasuring, pondering, realizing that she would lay down her life in order to save his, without any hesitation. She was willing to do for Jesus that which he did for all of us. Looking at Mary we see the profundity of what it means to be an icon of Christ – to bear his image and likeness in this world. Abiding in Jesus as a mother can mean being very present to the gift of a child, while recognizing our connection to him. In Mary’s constancy of sacrificial love for Jesus, she was able to uniquely demonstrate back to God his great love for us. As mothers, we can follow Mary’s example, and in loving and caring for our own children, demonstrate Christ’s love to them, and also to our world. This Advent I’m reminded anew of the holy calling of the work of mother. It is a sanctifying work, one in which I am stumbling and plodding along, crumbling goldfish crumbs along the way. I’m reminded that it is worth pressing into, worth being present for – to try and image Christ to my children, and thereby to our broken, hurting world.
This poem was submitted to the RezArts Festival. Write, paint, doodle, knit, sculpt, or create a song to share with our church based on this year’s theme, “I am the vine; you are the branches.” Learn more here.
Top painting by Peterson, Kathleen. Mary and Baby Jesus, from Art in the Christian Tradition, a project of the Vanderbilt Divinity Library, Nashville, TN. https://diglib.library.vanderbilt.edu/act-imagelink.pl?RC=56570 [retrieved December 14, 2023]. Original source: Kathleen Peterson, https://www.kathleenpetersonart.com.
