Grace and Truth: A word from

Mistress Mary, quite contrary,
How does your garden grow?
With silver bells, and cockle shells,
And pretty maids all in a row.

The sassy lass of the silver bells and cockle shells was my first Marian acquaintance. I thought it rather bold to have “contrary” and “pretty” in the same nursery rhyme. She was someone spunky I might like to know, who’d join me in my own cantankerous ways.

As a girl, I also met Mary mother, meek and mild—the one who gave birth to Jesus—and I didn’t find her nearly so intriguing. Content to sit in my family’s crèche sets each December, she whiled away the remainder of the year in the musty basement. Her bowed image—receiving the word of Gabriel or hovering over the manger—left me flat.

Instead of quietly praying, “Let it be,” I strove for courage, justice and compassion. I would not bow like Mary. There was too much masculine power concentrated in the church, and I didn’t trust that what the church asked of me was also what God asked of me.

And I wasn’t going to accept mother Mary as a consolation prize for centuries of iniquity. I wanted a Trinity that looked more like I did—female, young, active—and more like the gifted women I saw all around me in the church and beyond. And I still do.

As I grew into adulthood, I heard leaders in the Mennonite church caution against “Mary worship.” Perhaps these leaders worried that Christians who show devotion to Mary were less devoted to Jesus. Perhaps they—and I, too—wanted to protect Jesus from competition for our allegiance and affection. We wanted Jesus alone as our mediator, not a meek bystander to the Divine.

My heart leaned toward the contrarians in the Bible: Jacob the wrestler, the Psalmists and prophets who demand justice and mercy for all, and, often, Jesus.

Re-enter Mary.

A Mary who, before she says, “Let it be,” says, “How can this be?”

A Mary who, bursting at the seams spiritually and physically, lets loose a poem to her relative Elizabeth that is as rabble-rousing as ancient Hebrew prophets and modern hip-hop poets (Luke 1:46-55).

A Mary who gives birth to a son, rears him in faithfulness and wisdom, attends weddings with him and eventually accompanies him to the cross.

A Mary who sounds a lot like the mother eagle who “spreads its wings, takes [its young] up, and bears them aloft on its pinions” (Deuteronomy 32:11).

A Mary who mothers her son so that he might later mother Jerusalem: “Jerusalem, Jerusalem. … How often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing!” (Matthew 23:37 and Luke 13:34).

A Mary who, after all, does say yes to God’s plan for her.

A Mary who is full of grace: a sorrowing mother and a friend to many.

This is the Mary, “the first disciple,” so many Christians love and encounter in surprising places. Her image is painted onto chapel walls and plastic dashboard figurines. She has even begun to come out of the closets and off the shelves of some Mennonites. Prophet and witness, she is mother of God and part of the communion of saints that surround us.

Hearing stories of profound encounters with Mary reminds me that God conforms Godself “to suit our sight,”* as one poet puts it, whether filtered through the ever-faithful presence of Mary or through the words of a friend.

Mary’s re-entry into my imagination has meant a re-evaluation of her character—and my own. Perhaps the contrary and the meek are not in opposition, as I once supposed, but are brought together in the courageous persons of Jesus and his mother Mary.
May we join with Mary in proclaiming:

My soul magnifies the Lord, and my
spirit rejoices in God my Savior
(Luke 1:46b-47).

*From “The Blessed Virgin Compared to the Air We Breathe” by Gerard Manley Hopkins