Mostly, I think about Mary during advent. Maybe because she, aside from her holiness and purity, is the person in the Jesus Story I can relate to most. Contemplating her position of fear, submission, awe and wonder and worship all mixed in with this unique experience of carrying God–once you get inside her skin, it is very…
Well, I can’t, get inside her skin.

But Luci Shaw did. And she brings heaven to earth here inside this meditation. Luci is a Christian mystic, an author of several books, a poet, and a 1953 graduate of my alma mater, Wheaton College.

Mary’s Song

Blue homespun and the bend of my breast

keep warm this small hot naked star

fallen to my arms. (Rest…you who have had so far to come.)

Now nearness satisfies

the body of God sweetly.
Quiet he lies

whose vigor hurled a universe.

He sleeps

whose eyelids have not closed before.

His breath (so light it seems no breath at all) once ruffled the dark deeps

to sprout a world.

Charmed by doves’ voices, the whisper of straw, he dreams,

hearing no music from his other spheres.

Breath, mouth, ears, eyes

he is curtailed who overflowed all skies, all years.

Older than eternity, now he is new.

Now native to earth as I am, nailed to my poor planet,

caught that I might be free,

blind in my womb to know my darkness ended,

brought to this birth for me to be new-born,

and for him to see me mended

I must see him torn.

copyright 2000, Angels of Light