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.
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.
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