In the Christian Tradition - when the mother of Jesus is fully aware of her pregnancy, she sings a song. Her song, recorded in the Bible in the Gospel of Luke (Chapter 1), celebrates more than just the arrival of Jesus.
Her song reflects the traditions of an older prayer in Scripture, from Hannah in 1 Samuel (Chapter 2).
Both songs celebrate more than the birth of a child.
Each song celebrates the future hoped for reality of newness - and - reversals.
Reversals where the poor and downtrodden are raised up.
In a lovely 21st Century re-writing of the ideas found in these poems, Hillary Watson of Shalom Community Church in Ann Arbor, MI shared a wonderful poem found here.
I'll share snippets of it here:
Let me tell you the Good News:
There is Good News.
That’s it: goodness, somewhere, rushing toward us in the place where future meets present tense.
Hope unwinds across the fragile world and whispers its nightmares away.
There is a good day coming, I can see it, when the walls built up between countries crumble back into the earth they rose from and all the people run free where they want
. .
And God is a woman,
but not the way Ariana Grande thinks.
And God is judgmental but not because God is mean but because God is all goodness sorting itself out from all evil and goodness reaches into every cracked chasm of our lives until it overflows with love and love and love and love.
That’s why my smile scares you, isn’t it:
because I tell the truth you never thought you’d see me trade two fistfuls of anger for two fistfuls of hope pulling it up from the bottom of the ocean like seashells
and don’t you wish you knew what it was to feel this joy?
. . .
But I borrow joy from a future where your breath can’t reach, where your power doesn’t speak, I am in celebration for all our coming healing.Justice is the tsunami I will surf that gorgeous river setting everything free and don’t you see?
This is just the beginning.
Toward eupan ~
~ marty alan michelson, ph.d.
