Visiting Mary Visiting Elizabeth Visiting Us

Isn’t this painting magnificent?

Artist Bryn Gillette sweeps us into the swirl of life surrounding women who are with child. Out of whirlpools of love and suffering and chaos, they are bringing forth new life in all its variety, in all its sweetness, in all its hues and tints and tones, in all its depth and beauty. No wonder the spirit streams around them and through them and within them. After all, they are changing worlds. And one of them is very young and the other very old, and so they need each other. They must, they know, do this together – and, I think, with us.

The site on which I found this picture is part of Biola University in California’s Advent project. They have posted an Advent Calendar on which you can click and see each day, a work of art, a poem, one or more Scripture verses, and a reflection. The site also offers a short piece of music for the day, sometimes classical, sometimes blues, as well as other eclectic and stirring pieces.

I’ll include a link – https://ccca.biola.edu/advent/2021/# – but also a caveat with it. As much as I love to ponder the daily artwork, music, and especially the poetry, the commentary is problematic, sometimes very much so. I looked up Biola University and found it is one of the most conservative evangelical colleges in the country. The commentaries consistently use the male pronoun for God and in the first week of Advent’s discourses on the annunciation, visitation, and Magnificat persisted in diverting our attention from Mary and Elizabeth to focus only on whom they will bring forth and what this means for our salvation. Both Mary and Elizabeth, they seem to be saying, are only vessels, examples, lessons: on obedience, on unwavering belief, on patience and humility, and, as most fortunate “among women” to be chosen to have this birth “done unto” them.

In contrast, the painting itself has them fully engaged in what is happening, in awe, yes, but participating, significantly so. 

Have you ever seen pictures of the birth of stars the Hubble telescope has sent back to earth?  Stars are born in swirls of energy like those in the painting. Everything is creating and being created. Nothing is static. Nothing is reduced to insignificance. The stars and that which births them are both magnificent. If a technological invention like Hubble can see this; why can’t we? All of us?

This poem is on the same website as the painting. Let’s consoles ourselves by doing something. Please send its glorious message out to the universe and back again:

sisters 
by Lucille Clifton

me and you be sisters.
we be the same.
me and you
coming from the same place.
me and you
be greasing our legs
touching up our edges.
me and you
be scared of rats
be stepping on roaches.
me and you
come running high down purdy street one time
and mama laugh and shake her head at
me and you.
me and you
got babies
got thirty-five
got black
let our hair go back
be loving ourselves
be loving ourselves
be sisters.
only where you sing
i poet.