Heaven Now Was at the Left Breast of His Mother

And then the assignments changed. The first stretch of the Exercises is about sin, and the second is the life of Jesus. You stop staring at what is wrong with the world and you go walk around in it with him. Nobody made an announcement. Father Randolph simply started handing me people.

The passage was the Annunciation, the angel and the young girl and the impossible thing being asked of her. If the word is not familiar, the scene probably is. An angel turns up in a nothing town called Nazareth and tells a teenage girl, engaged but not yet married, that she is going to have a baby, and that the baby is God’s. He does not tell her what it will cost her, which is everything: her reputation, her engagement, possibly her life, since the penalty for what everyone will assume she has done is not a small one. He tells her what is going to happen and then he waits. And she says yes.

Ignatius does not want you to study a story like that. He wants you to walk into it, and walking into a story means you are not standing outside it litigating what happened. So I did not. Whatever occurred in that room, and I have my questions like everybody else, the story hands you a young woman being asked for something enormous. What she does with the asking is the part I could not get past.

As I prayed over it, it was so clear to me. Mary did nothing to produce the greatest work of God the world has ever known. Her doing was to be open, willing, to believe and trust. That’s it. After that, the work did itself, because it was empowered by the Spirit of God. The seed was not hers to plant. The baby grew all by itself inside her, because that is what a woman’s body already knows how to do. The baby was born without her making it happen. Yes, she travailed, and eventually she pushed. But the truth is, she could not have not done that. It, too, was simply the way she was made to work. She did not have to pray real hard to churn up milk inside her breasts, or push real hard to get it to flow. God had already created her that way.

I long to have a spirit like Mary’s. I long to only do that which God works in me and through me to do. Not to write a book or film a movie or be a life coach because I need the money or the significance or to store up for my future. But, to be content to do nothing except what God plants within me and moves within me and delivers through me and that I enjoy doing because I can’t NOT do it. Oh, but, wow, that would take more faith than I have at this time. I do have faith to sit still in silence without doing anything for a few minutes every day, in open, trusting, willingness to believe. I hope that counts as a yes.

The road to Bethlehem

Then Father Randolph gave me the road to Bethlehem, and Ignatius asks you to do something with a passage like that which still startles me. You don’t observe it. You climb inside somebody and you stay there. So I closed my eyes and I was not Lisa watching Mary. I was Mary. Her body, her fear, her nine-months-pregnant back on the spine of an animal. Everything from here is hers, or mine, and by the end of that hour I could not have told you where the seam was.

As instructed, I put myself into the scene of Mary riding on the donkey to Bethlehem and giving birth in a stable. I engaged all my senses. In addition to “looking” around in my mind’s eye at the scene, I imagined the smells, sounds, and what I would be feeling, inside and out.

And I was surprised at my reactions on the donkey. I had a good attitude, like, oh well, maybe this will make the baby come earlier. I am ready to get this basketball out of here! And, hey, the reason we have to go so far to Bethlehem is because I am marrying a descendant of DAVID, for goodness sakes! That’s worth a long trip, I think. (Oh, and the whole prophecy thing about the Messiah being born in Bethlehem.)

And, of course, I was in love with Joseph and he was so sweet and understanding and gentle. We went to some distant relatives of his to stay for the Census because all the hotels were full. They couldn’t have been sweeter (although, I did get the usual “judgy” looks, but I’m used to that, by now. What can I do? I’m certainly not going to tell them the truth. I tried that a couple of times and then I got the “judgy/she’s crazy-in-the-head” looks.)

We slept in their barn with their animals. The smell was a bit much but it was comfortable enough. I was just glad to get off that donkey. Although, as I lay there I felt like I was still swaying back and forth for hours. That is, in between contractions! Yep, the donkey did the trick, the Messiah is finally coming! (Foreshadowing, anyone? Jesus comes riding into town on a donkey and they recognize him as the Messiah?!)

Joseph ran to get his relatives and all his distant aunts and cousins came to help with the birth. It was a bit strange having so many strangers around at such an exposing time but, thankfully, one of them had done quite a bit of midwifering in her years so she held my hand and walked me through it step-by-step.

The whole time I just wanted my mommy! I wish I could have been home to have my first baby. But, Joseph was there holding my other hand and I guess it is time for me to leave and cleave. (By the way, I just realized, this means I can really “cleave” with him now. Yikes! I’m so nervous. I’ve never done “that” before. But, I’m sure he will be as sweet and gentle and loving as he is in everything else.)

Next, I imagined giving birth to the baby; I didn’t dwell on that part, they didn’t have epidurals back then. Then I fell in love, like deeply, wildly, profoundly, completely in love with my baby. Messiah, or not, nothing could have made me adore and worship this child more. He looked just like me, with a little bit of my father and grandmother thrown in for good measure. I wish he could have looked like Joseph, I think he’s so handsome. But, hopefully, I will eventually get to give him a son that looks like him.

The baby screamed and cried, hmmm….I guess I never thought of God screaming and crying but he was hungry! He latched right on and we were both lost in bliss. I could have stared into the face of God forever and when he looked up at me with those big brown eyes I felt the love of the whole world in his gaze. Joseph adjusted the straw and blankets to make me comfortable and the baby and I lay down and fell fast asleep, the most heavenly feeling in the world, to rest with God.

We were awakened some time later by a knock on the barn door. Apparently, God sent out a huge birth announcement when His son was born and a bunch of shepherds were the first to read it. They came to see for themselves what God looked like, considering we had always been told that if we look at God face-to-face, we would surely die. I still don’t understand the whole God/human thing.

The shepherds told me what the angels said and it has certainly given me a lot to think about. I have to say, I am so grateful that God keeps sending these messengers, first Elizabeth, then the angel to Joseph, then that uncle of Joseph’s that reminded him of that prophecy in Micah, and now these shepherds. I’m so glad He understands that this is all really hard for me to understand. I can believe, but only when I don’t try to wrap my mind around it too much. Thank you, God, that you know and understand and accept how hard it is for me to believe you, sometimes. And that you keep sending people to remind me what you are up to, and that I can keep on believing, and that I am not crazy and do not have a “Messiah complex” mental disorder.

At some point I stepped back out of her and was just myself again, sitting on a bench in California, looking at the two of them. And then I did what Ignatius has you do at the end, which is pick somebody in the scene and talk to them. I picked the baby.

I imagined talking to the baby in Mary’s arms. I felt him communicate with me that at that point in his life, he had no awareness of himself as the son of God. His whole world was wrapped up in his mother and his father. He loved the sound of her voice from so many months hearing it from inside her womb. He recognized his father’s voice, too, and loved it in a different way. He just wanted to be as close to her as possible. He felt calmed when he touched and smelled her skin. The sound and smell of his father elicited different feelings, somewhat foreign but alluring and comforting in some far off sort of way.

He didn’t know how she did it, but she always knew when he was feeling empty and scared and hurting in a way he had no name for. But she always knew. She would pick him up, and put him to her breast, and something warm and sweet would slide down his throat and quiet everything in him until he fell asleep in heaven by her side.

Heaven before had always been at the right hand of the Father. Heaven now was at the left breast of his mother.

I had spent the hour inside a girl who did not make any of it happen. She said yes and then her body did what it already knew how to do, and God grew in the dark without her help. I have never once in my life let anything happen that way.

Next week, I build a house for a boy who could ask his father anything, and then I look at what I built.

Where are you still working hard at something that was only ever meant to be received? And whatever else came up while you were reading, the comments are yours. Also, if you could ask me anything, what would you ask? And have you considered joining us around the table on Thursdays where we go deep (and shallow!)?