Welcome back readers, and welcome, new readers –
As we get closer to the day when we celebrate Christ’s birth, we have been thinking about his mother, Mary. Through her, the wonder of the coming of God to earth becomes something familiar: every one of us has been a newborn and each of us has a mother.
Alfred Delp, a Jesuit priest writing from a Nazi prison cell, called Mary “the most comforting of all the Advent figures” and yet goes on to say that through the birth of her Son, “the world has come under a different law.” This young mother – who surely gazed at her firstborn with the joy and wonder of all mothers – is the same woman who rejoiced in the Lord who “puts down the mighty and exalts the humble and meek.” As Advent draws to a close we imagine her approaching Bethlehem, uncertain and probably afraid, waiting for the time to be fulfilled.
The earliest known visual depictions of the Nativity were made in the fourth century. In this post we’ve included three that we love that were made in the last few decades, starting with this new painting of Mary and her Child by Rita Wegner, who lives with her husband Marcus in the Bruderhof house in Pittsburgh, PA.
Rita writes: “Every year we make our own card to send around to our friends, always wanting to put something of meaning into it that comes from our hearts. This year I was inspired to try to work the Fibonacci Spiral into the picture. I love how it represents the order in God’s creation – a mathematical pattern found in galaxies, tornadoes, pinecones, seashells and so on (look it up!). It is something secure in a fast-changing world. When my sister sent a photo of my niece and her new baby, there was the spiral already in the composition; I just gave it more emphasis with the cloak as I used that photo as a model for my painting.
“God’s timing in history also follows the patterns of a great eternal clock and it blows the mind to think how our God, the Creator of all things, had the humility to become a human baby. Vulnerable and dependent, He had to submit to Mary, a fallible person, relying on her untested instincts as a new mother. I know the panic that came over me as a new mother and I believe Mary was no different, no otherworldly saint. How keenly she and Joseph must have felt that they had blown the whole thing, that they had failed to find a half decent shelter for the birth...of the Messiah! And then the shepherds arrived with the report of the angels’ words ‘You will find the baby wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in a manger.’ What seemed like a failure turns out to be a sign! A divine endorsement! Something to ponder in her heart for years.”
Marianne – in Woodcrest, upstate New York
There is a German folk-song that I remember hearing when I was very young. It begins, “Sei Menschenkind allwegs bereit”
Child of man, be always prepared
Many gates lead to Eternity
Some are great, some are small
And one will be opened for you.
I loved this song: the melody is very beautiful, and as a child I didn’t understand the German words of the first verse, which are a little fearsome. Even if I had, the refrain would have reassured me: “Mary will lead us / Mary will guide us / The mother and queen of heaven.”
This is one of dozens of “Marienlieder” (Mary songs) which have been sung on the Bruderhof during the 100 years since it was founded in Germany. This might seem a little surprising since we are Anabaptists; Bruderhof co-founder Emmy Arnold explains in an account of the early days of the community: “We wanted no difference between the ‘outer’ life and the ‘inner’ life, and we rejected all civilized outward piety, while we searched for a new expression, a new culture. Not that the individual person could make something, but a communal culture, born in community with others. We saw models of this in the Middle Ages, in its guilds, its architecture and paintings, its folksongs and religious songs. Mary became for us an example of womanhood, so we liked to sing songs of Mary.”
Emmy’s husband Eberhard spoke about the significance of the example of Mary during a worship meeting in Advent 1934:
The eternal Christ wants to have a body, to take visible form. Mary believed the word and received the life-bestowing Spirit. Because she believed, the living Word took form within her. And it came to pass: the Word was flesh and became visible and real among men: that was the first embodiment. Just as with Mary, so with the church community. The living Word – Christ – became flesh a second time through the church community, once more through a mother. The church is our mother; the Holy Spirit descends, and we are born of her.
The apostles did not believe in phantoms. The very substance of the gospel is that the invisible shall receive material form, that it shall become part of reality. That is faith: that what is unseen becomes part of what is material and visible. That is what happened to Mary, and it happens here, too. In the life of the church community, in the daily practices that belong to the life and task of the church community –community of goods and work and in the common table – here we recognize that the invisible has become visible, that we are seeing the incarnation, the embodiment of the Word and of the Spirit. Just as with Mary, this embodiment must be given form in accordance with the will of God, so that what we did not understand is now fully seen.
Their daughter Emy-Margret gives a child’s perspective of the early years of community: “Advent and Christmas was always a time of great expectation for the whole community. My father read to us how the angel Gabriel came to Mary and made known to her the coming of Jesus, and how she had answered him, ‘Here am I, a handmaiden of the Lord; let it be to me according to thy will.’ All this was very real and living for us, and we loved the Mary songs. There was great reverence for Mary. Some of the songs were ‘Meerstern, ich dich grüße, O Maria hilf’ (Star of the ocean, I salute thee. O Mary, help us), ‘Es blühen drei Rosen auf einem Zweig’ (Three roses bloom upon one stem), ‘Und unser lieben Frauen, der traumelte ein Traum’ (Our beloved Lady was sent a wondrous dream). We all felt that Mary was an example to us of obedience to God, and we had great reverence for the fact that she was a virgin and a mother.”
The songs of Mary are a mixture of the down-to-earth – she washes baby clothes, she rocks the baby – and mystical – she walks over a bridge to Paradise, the bells of heaven ring when she approaches. These songs were often sung as Christmas lullabies: although we as children had no concept of the words, the spirit and beauty and reverence for mother and child, for Mary’s love and sacrifice and humility, for the baby’s innocence and the significance of his earthly birth somehow wove its way into our hearts without a translation. The tunes are often haunting and medieval, but because they are folk songs they are easy to learn and remember, and they are reassuring because they are about a mother’s love, and the greater Love that is the reason for Christmas. The song I began with ends by telling of Mary’s Son,
Sitting on the throne of Heaven.
He looks at us with a friendly countenance
And gives a merciful hearing to sinners.
Norann – in Danthonia, New South Wales, Australia
I had the gift of being pregnant during Advent four times. The first time, our little one left us after several, precious months. The other three times I birthed living sons in the new year.
Every time, I thought of Mary.
Mary – whose humility allowed her the highest blessing.
Mary – whose active faith gave her an ear to the heart of God.
Mary – whose prayer and patience gave her the ability to ponder the treasures of God, not talk about them.
Mary – whose silence, obedience, and waiting created a holy space for God to dwell.
Even though she is all those things, Mary is an ordinary mother in an extraordinary time. She’s a mother we can all relate to, whatever our station in life.
I still associate this season very strongly with pregnancy because of that primal connection with that Other Time of waiting; that creation of salvation and rising of redemption.
Every baby on earth ever is either being formed during Advent, or living as a baby during the Christmas season. It is a time when, in a special way, our little ones on the other side are remembered and those not yet conceived are prayed for.
Advent allows us a lenten time and space to actively prepare, to hopefully wait, to allow a new being to be birthed in us, to remember again that we serve a Creator who makes all things new.
I’m not Catholic, but when Our Lady of the Southern Cross was crafted by Paul Newton for Sydney’s World Youth Day in 2008, I resonated with the painting. I had just given birth to our third son, here in Australia. Mary’s eyes are downcast, the stars of the southern cross sparkle above her and reflect in Jesus’s eyes. The land is barren, just as it was when our son was born – and had been when we arrived and would be again. Mary is crowned with a wattle blossom garland, and looks at home with her child but like a stranger in a bleak land. I had felt like that foreigner for so many years, but that changed with the birth of our son…slowly, his arrival grew a wonder in me. That wonder turning into an understanding that God can do anything He desires from any situation that occurs. He can take the roughest narrative and rewrite the story to His glory. Just like Mary’s Magnificat proclaimed, “the Mighty One has done great things for me,” I could celebrate the reality of God’s good and guiding hand throughout my journey.
Each Advent season – as I contemplate the example of Mary – I strive to reclaim the waiting and the wonder, the silence and the stillness, the burning belief that God is about to do something new. He has. He does. He will again.
Trudi – in Spring Valley, southwest Pennsylvania
I’ve been thinking a lot about Mary. I guess because she’s the young lady in the Christmas story. She was probably about ten years younger than I am now, when an angel came and her life took a surprising turn. But whatever her age, her girl’s heart, like mine, had to open to allow God’s will to be done. She asked a simple question “How will this be since I am a virgin?”, and she accepted the answer trustingly. She could have thought up a myriad of other questions, but she had a heart of faith instead.
I have questions for God. Even if I try to narrow them down to one or two, other questions often surface and fill my mind. Often I worry about other people. What about them? Shouldn’t I explain? But God sent an angel to speak into Joseph’s dream. I can also trust that He will take care of the messy details in my life. I think Mary probably had some wonderments and questions in her mind, but she pondered everything in her heart instead – reverently, quietly.
I also think of the nine months before Jesus’ birth. I think Mary must have prayed often. The waiting must have been hard. Traveling to Bethlehem, finding no room, giving birth in a place meant only for animals. . . . She must have sometimes wondered why God’s Son wasn’t getting better care.
And then shepherds and kings came to worship Mary’s child. That must have been a highlight. An unspeakably joyous and holy moment to have the identity of her Son confirmed.
But then they became refugees, fleeing to Egypt to escape Herod’s sword. I don’t think Mary floated along in a golden bubble of faith. I think, like me, she had to pray and trust that God would help them through trials. And like any of us, I think she had to focus on the present, the only place where the grace of God is a reality.
And I’d like to think that Mary had joy. In between the anxious moments, I’m quite sure she had the joy that comes from obedience to God.
So as Advent turns to Christmas, and Christmas to a new year, I know I can choose to keep a heart like Mary’s: a young girl’s heart, open to God’s guidance, trusting His ways. And I will have joy.
What we’re enjoying
Trudi
Is very busy helping prepare the community Christmas celebrations, and didn’t have time to decide what she’s enjoying.
Norann
Often during the middle of our sweltering Saturdays and Sundays, a variety of neighborhood children descend upon the cool of my large, tiled living room.
On repeat during those hours – while artwork, Lego, and doll families are created and disassembled and put back together again, and there is feasting upon dried apricots and beef jerky – are the following three albums:
The John Rutter Christmas Album by the Cambridge Singers: exquisite caroling and arrangements
Festliche Stunden im Kerzenglanz (Festive Hours by Candlelight) by Das Benthien-Quartet – gorgeous instrumental arrangements of your favorite German Christmas songs: skip “Kommet Ihr Hirten” if you dislike (as my family does) over-energetic oboes
Midwinter Carols by Joel Clarkson: piano arrangements made and played by Joel Clarkson
If you are looking for non-commercialized, clear and simple sounds for this Christmas, look no further.
Marianne
I appreciated a post on Hilary White’s substack telling about the history of Nativity scenes, with photographs of nativities from Narni, Italy (where she lives) as well as sacred artwork picturing Christ’s birth going back to the fifth century. (See also: this photo essay of portrayals of the Nativity by Asian artists.) Hilary also tells the history of live nativities which legend associates with Francis of Assisi; in Germany this is known as the “Stille Krippe” (Silent Manger) and on the Bruderhof we gather in silence on Christmas Eve in front of a live nativity. Here’s a fifteenth century poem that seems to fit:
Lo, in the silent night
A child to God is born
And all is brought again
That ere was lost or lornCould but thy soul, O man
Become a silent night!
God would be born in thee
And set all things aright.
And one more thing…
During Covid times, when we couldn’t invite friends and neighbors to celebrate and sing carols with us, the Bruderhof produced two video concerts with performances contributed from people from all over the world. The days of socially isolating are thankfully just a memory now, but we hope you and your children enjoy hearing and seeing some of our favorite Christmas songs.
Happy Advent!
I am Catholic, but am blessed by your Substack and thrilled that you see the beauty of Mary in God's plan of salvation. Advent peace to you.
Wow! I love that artwork by Rita Wegner - so beautiful, it reminds me of holding my children when they were that small. I also love that it includes a Fibonacci spiral!! God's plans are not only good, they are beautiful. Thanks again for your musings, they are a good reminder to pause and ponder.