I like your questions at the end of your blog "Each of us is a gift from God; each of us has been given a gift of grace.What will we do with our gift as we walk the road of our lives?"

For me I try to use that gift daily - to do the best I can

Concerning Mary, I will post two poems. one is poetic and beautiful. The other is --- let's just say "blunt". Both, in my opinion, are worthwhile:

STARTLED BY A HOLY HUMMING by Thomas H. Troeger

Startled by a holy humming

Drumming in her heart and ear,

Mary heard an angel coming,

Gabriel was drawing near.

From the loud though soundless beating

Of the flashing, unseen wings

Pulsed the words of sacred greeting:

She would bear the king of kings.

Troubled by the angel’s blessing

Mary asked how it could be.

In a way she was confessing

All that doubt could never see:

How the flesh is filled with spirit,

How the heart can beat with love,

How another heart can hear it,

How this comes from God above.

Tending to the voice of heaven

Mary’s doubts began to fade

While her faith like rising leaven

Grew until she gladly prayed:

“May it be as God has spoken,

May it be as I have heard,

May God’s will be never broken,

May I live by God’s own word.”

Startled, troubled, then believing

Mary’s vision opened wide.

She by faith began perceiving

Life and truth from heaven’s side.

Lord, may we at last like Mary

Catch the slant of heavens light

Piercing through the doubts that bury

Hope and grace from human sight.

******

MARY by Philip Appleman

Years later, it was, after everything

got hazy in my head - those buzzing flies,

the gossips, graybeards, hustling evangelists -

they wanted facts, they said,

but what they were really after,

was miracles.

Miracles, imagine! I was only a girl

when it happened, Joseph

acting edgy and claiming

it wasn’t his baby - - -

Anyway, years later

they wanted miracles, like the big-time cults

up in Rome and Athens, God

come down in a shower of coins,

a sexy swan, something like that.

But no, there was only

one wild-eyed man at our kitchen window

telling me I’m lucky.

And pregnant.

I said, “Talk sense mister, it’s got to be

the one thing or the other.”

No big swans, no golden coins

in that grubby mule-and-donkey village. Still,

they wanted miracles,

and what could I tell them? He

was my baby, after all, I washed

his little bum, was I

supposed to think I was wiping

God Almighty?

But they wanted miracles, kept after me

to come up with one: “This fellow at the window,

did he by any chance have wings?”

Wings! Do frogs have wings?

Do camels fly?

They thought it over. “Cherubim”, they said,

“may walk the earth like men

and work their wonders.”

I laughed in their hairy faces. No

cherub, that guy! But

they wouldn’t quit - fanatics, like

the gang he fell in with years ago’

all goading him till he began to believe

in quick cures and faith healing,

just like the cranks in Jerusalem, every

phony in town speaking in tongues

and handling snakes. Not exactly

what you’d want for your son, is it?

I tried to warn him, but he just says,

“I must be about my father’s business.”

“Fine,” I say, “I’ll buy you a new

hammer.” But nothing could stop him, already

hooked on the crowds, the hosannas,

the thrill of needling the bureaucrats.

Holier than thou, he got, roughing up

the rabbis even. Every night

I cried myself to sleep - my son,

my baby boy - - -

You know how it all turned out, the crunch

of those awful spikes,

the spear in his side, the whole town watching,

home-town folks come down from Nazareth

with a strange gleam in their eyes. Then later on

the grave robbers, the hucksters, the imposters all

claiming to be him. I was sick

for a year, his bloody image

blurring the sunlight.

And now they want miracles, God

at my maidenhead, sex without sin.

“Go home,” I tell them, “back to your libraries,

read about your fancy Greeks,

and come up with something amazing, if you must.”

Me, I’m just a small-town woman,

a carpenter’s wife, Jewish mother, nothing

special. But listen,

whenever I told my baby a fairy tale,

I let him know it was a fairy tale.

Go, all of you, and do likewise.

Does a fairy tale contain a hiddden light ... intelligence that a world hates ... unless it is under their personal control?

It is a funny concoction in the shadow of the night spaces ... within the expansive ness of a person's desire not to leave a comfortable place in Plato's cave of the mind. Some thing to probe for hidden waters of thought.

Then, individual thinking ... ides a sin, or is that synthesis of spirit; turning nothing into something for the alien along the way ... your sacred pal?

JRT, thanks for the poems, both of them. I love anything Thomas Troeger writes. This Sunday I am taking a run at Joseph, and have a hymn by Troeger for that as well. Blessings, and a Merry Christmas.