How can a mother ever quite forget, <br />or quite relinquish in her memory, <br />that state which babies share with saints: <br />to be free from all desires of mind? <br /> <br />And so the mother must take on <br />that strange but natural responsibility <br />to desire, for the baby in her charge; but then, <br />one day, to learn to stop to ‘mother’ <br />for the child’s own growing sake.. <br /> <br />And how much more, instinct and reason <br />must have played in Her; given a responsibility <br />greater than the world itself? <br /> <br />And who can ever know those private conversations <br />between the growing Child of God <br />and young earthly mother of that heavenly Child? <br /> <br />So, when at that wedding and its showing-forth <br />the servants were unsure, She was there <br />to say ‘Do what He says’.. <br /> <br />And from John comes that bald account <br />which we must read each for ourself: <br />‘Woman, what have you to do with Me…? ’ <br /> <br />He, not yet ready as He thought, <br />for destiny; divisive miracles? <br /> <br />Who knows how many private conversations <br />lay behind that question and its rhetoric – <br />public, and recorded by that deeply impressed scribe… <br /> <br />and whether it was said with gentle smile <br />(who reads the words of Jesus as from One <br />who almost always smiled – His words, a gift?) <br /> <br />or said with firm authority, which we may take <br />as heard by Her, not with a fusser’s shame, <br />but with Magnificat still ringing in Her mind? <br /> <br />And then, perhaps, She learned to grieve <br />and not to grieve, beneath a holy Cross.. <br /> <br />I think this passage is forever read <br />by men in one way; women in another; <br />and perhaps, that’s just how it should be.<br /><br />Michael Shepherd<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/woman-70/
