Annunciation

For some reason this advent season, I've been spending a lot of time thinking about and being with Mary.  It might have something to do with my rekindled obsession with Breath of Heaven, which many of my students sang at our Christmas concert last year.  If you missed that, check out this great video with scenes from The Nativity: Breath of Heaven. 
Much of my thought and prayer this Advent with Mary has been about trust and anticipation... awaiting the unknown and yet trusting that all will be well, even if we can't always see how that will unfold.  This speaks to me on many levels of my life and I imagine it always will.  The myth of certainty and guarantees has been fed to all of us in America.  If you do x, y will be the result.  And yet, there are many other variables that aren't included in that original equation.  I can't control what other people say, I can't control health and illness, I can't control accidents, I can't control the actions of others.... but I can only control my response... and like Mary, I can trust.
A beautiful prayer and poem on the Annunciation, that moment of radical trust and assurance in the face of uncertainty and fear:

Annunciation

By Denise Levertov

‘Hail, space for the uncontained God’
From the Agathistos Hymn, Greece, VIc

We know the scene: the room, variously furnished,
almost always a lectern, a book; always
the tall lily.
                   Arrived on solemn grandeur of great wings,
the angelic ambassador, standing or hovering,
whom she acknowledges, a guest.

But we are told of meek obedience. No one mentions
courage.
                  The engendering Spirit
did not enter her without consent.
                                            God waited.

She was free
to accept or to refuse, choice
integral to humanness.

          ____________________________

Aren’t there annunciations
of one sort or another
in most lives?
                   Some unwillingly
undertake great destinies,
enact them in sullen pride,
uncomprehending.
             More often
those moments
     when roads of light and storm
     open from darkness in a man or woman,
are turned away from
in dread, in a wave of weakness, in despair
and with relief.
Ordinary lives continue.
                                 God does not smite them.
But the gates close, the pathway vanishes.

         ______________________________

She had been a child who played, ate, slept
like any other child – but unlike others,
wept only for pity, laughed
in joy not triumph.
Compassion and intelligence
fused in her, indivisible.

Called to a destiny more momentous
than any in all of Time,
she did not quail,
                          only asked
a simple, 'How can this be?'
and gravely, courteously,
took to heart the angel’s reply,
perceiving instantly
the astounding ministry she was offered:

to bear in her womb
Infinite weight and lightness; to carry
in hidden, finite inwardness,
nine months of Eternity; to contain
in slender vase of being,
the sum of power –
in narrow flesh,
the sum of light.
                   Then bring to birth,
push out into air, a Man-child
needing, like any other,
milk and love –

but who was God.