Annunciate

Tomorrow we will hear the story in Luke of an angel visiting a young woman to deliver momentous news. Gabriel's unsettling, life-changing announcement to Mary about her pregnancy is called the Annunciation. It does mean announcement, but I think of the encouragement I gave our kids when they were young to annunciate when they did any public speaking, including scripture reading in church.

It seems as though we are a bit mumbly these days when it comes to our message of Good News in Christ. We can complain all we want about how our society has become more secular, but who ever said that proclaiming Emmanuel, God-With-Us, would be easy. Perhaps we got a little spoiled for a those few decades after World War II. Church-going was easy and Christian discipleship was casual. And now so many of those Boomers --I are one!--  and their children and grandchildren have drifted off somewhere. Churches are less sure of themselves, and have become less articulate about the hope and peace and joy and love embodied in Christ.

I don't usually include long poems as part of a blog -- a few paragraphs and then shut up is my usual modus operandi. But Annunciation by the late Denise Levertov is a good one, maybe a great one.


Remember friends, annunciate!

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,
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.

This was the moment no one speaks of,

when she could still refuse.

A breath unbreathed,

                                Spirit,

                                          suspended,

                                                            waiting.

                  ____________________

She did not cry, ‘I cannot. I am not worthy,’

Nor, ‘I have not the strength.’

She did not submit with gritted teeth,

                                                       raging, coerced.

Bravest of all humans,

                                  consent illumined her.

The room filled with its light,

the lily glowed in it,

                               and the iridescent wings.

Consent,

              courage unparalleled,

opened her utterly.