Outrageous

Meditation on Luke 1:39-45  The pregnant Virgin visits her cousin Elizabeth, also unexpectedly

                                                         expecting

This gospel story has to do with the outrageous joy of those who find themselves unexpectedly blessed.

What is so outrageous about joy? Because it persists and rebounds amongst the shambles of a violent world, a place of murdered children and their martyred minders, a place that sees  grieving parents blamed by pistol-packing pastors and the funerals of innocents picketed by professional haters.

Outrageous because we ourselves are killers,  sending out unmanned drones to patrol the outskirts of our empire, like guardian angels with their souls detached and projected through the air from  a thousand miles away, projected into space and refracted back, lethal as a crossbow or a spear, except not so precisely aimed. In this way we protect ourselves from enemies (and anyone else in their vicinity), without any risk to ourselves, without disturbance to our shopping sprees.

The only joy that can survive in such a place would have to be outrageous, or else simply blind, or nuts.

                                                                 "All generations will call me blessed"

                                                                        

                                                                      

I prefer to think, outrageous. Valid, like Elizabeth crying out as the Blessed Mary came waltzing through the door, “And why has this happened to me?” How is it that we find ourselves so pregnant, after all these unpromising events and unfulfiling years? How is it that, regardless of our gender or our years, potential squirms within us at the sound of a friendly voice? How is it that we feel outrageous joy, despite the danger looming in the sky and at the school?

With Mary and Elizabeth we are called into subversive conclave, meeting in the hill country to avoid detection by unmanned killer drones, meeting to laugh and slap each other gently on the back (for we are pregnant, after all), meeting to practice breathing and breast feeding techniques, and give vent to the outrageous joy of those who find themselves so unexpectedly blessed.