When Mary's Water Broke

 Early this morning Ruth shared this message from social media and we both laughed. As I shovelled snow later I thought about the fact that we celebrate the birth of Jesus with no birthin' o' babies allowed, in some respects. Of course we have endless images from the history of art depicting the manger scene, most of them wildly inaccurate. But we don't want Mary's water to break and we sure don't won't her to moan and groan giving birth. There is nary a mention of these human realities in carols or art. I mean, uck. 

It's weird that while Christianity is different than others religions in the centrality of "God with us" in the flesh we avoid some basic realities of Jesus actually getting here. In the early centuries of Christianity some streams of the faith wanted to work around the humanity of Jesus, both at birth and death. They were deemed heretical, so the uck factor is essential, even when it makes us skirm.

Earlier this year a Roman Catholic church in Austria displayed what became a controversial statue of Mary giving birth. Some parishioners labelled it as blasphemous and then vandals beheaded it, an ironic act of violence, wouldn't you say? I'm fairly confident that the perpetrator(s) were male. The Guardian newspaper interviewed the artist: 

The artist who created the “crowning” sculpture, Esther Strauss, also condemned the destruction, according to the Linz diocese statement. “Most portraits of the Virgin Mary were made by men and have therefore often served patriarchal interests,” she said, adding that in her sculpture, “Mary gets her body back”. 

“Whoever removed the head from the sculpture was very brutal,” Strauss said. “For me, this violence is an expression of the fact that there are still people who question women’s right to their own bodies. We have to take a very firm stance against this.”

As a father present for the birth of all of three children I was in awe of Ruth's stamina and strength pushing those three marvelous babies into the world. I would have understood if shed decide that enough was enough after the first one but the everyday miracle of birth happened again, and again.

Now, should we start in on "The cattle are lowing, the baby awakes, but little Lord Jesus, no crying he makes"?...