The women we love, the children we are

“Their birth-songs are battle-songs, the women we love,” Joseph says to Elkanah. Elkanah thinks of Hannah, mocked by Penninah for what seems her weakness, her childlessness. Joseph considers Mary, pregnant without (apparently) the (biological) involvement of a male. “The women we love sing the mighty from their thrones, the empty-handed rich, the broken bows of the mighty and the wealthy hiring themselves out for minimum wage. They sing the humble exalted, the poor raised up from dust and the needy lifted from the ash-heap to sit with princes”. “Yes, they do, Elkanah says to Joseph. "They most certainly do.” 

Joseph and Elkanah cannot speak for Mary and Hannah. But they can consider them, the women they love, and wonder what these birth-and-battle songs might mean. Elkanah knows the gossip that shrouds the soul of the woman he loves, that Penninah provokes Hannah to weeping and hunger. Joseph knows that he can foster or ruin the thriving of his expectant betrothed, whose expectancy has no standing in the gossip column of public morality. We have seen the women we love come under the terrifying lens of “measuring up”. More than one of them may have shared with one or some of us both the holy mystery of birthing and the brutal measuring of motherhood. Isaiah reminds them of a time when “no more will children born to calamity”, and invites them to imagine a different and more holy world of birthing. Elkanah is intrigued. Joseph is quiet. 

Joseph thinks, “I wonder how it is that calamity comes upon children, and that we so easily accept it. I wonder, is Mary’s birth-and-battle song meant to awaken something in me, something in us?"   Elkanah (as if he could read Joseph’s mind) says, “I think these birth-and-battle songs are their witness to otherwise, to the end of accepting “children born to calamity”, and a whole lot more, as just the way things are.” 

I listen to Joseph and Elkanah and I wonder, “Can motherhood be defiant?” The women we love say, “D’ya think?” A birth in these stories is not continuity, predictability, or status. In these stories, birth is the central moment,  and women the central characters, in the divine upending of business-as-usual, by their birthing and nurturing of babies with attitude, holy attitude. 

 

Samuel has attitude. He will call Saul to account. He will anoint the alternative king, the imperfect David, who loses his way but somehow not his humanity. 

 

Jesus has attitude. He will receive the Spirit’s anointing as he honours the authority of baptizing John and enters into his life’s work, which is to reintroduce us to the unimaginable mystery that is our lives with God, and to the power that mystery imparts to the meek, the hungry, and the downcast. 

I wonder if we have spent so much energy wanting what we cannot have, imagining that wealth and power and status can stabilize our falling-apart lives, that we cannot hear the birth-and-battle song that the universe sings at all our births, and that all our mothers echo as they search into the mystery of human beginnings. 

I wonder what would happen if we could embrace who we were when we were born: Naked, helpless, hungry, and red-hot from the heart of God. 

“For the whole world waits with eager longing for the revealing of the children of God.” 

 For Advent 3: Luke 1 (Mary’s song), with support from 1 Samuel 1 (Hannah’s song), Isaiah, and Romans.