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Excerpt : from
the Introduction |
Page:
1,2,3,4,5
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The great British historian R.G. Collingwood maintained that writing history requires both empathy and imagination. He did not mean spinning tales out of thin air -- far more than enough of that has already been done in the case of Mary, both by those who worship her and those who seek to tear her down -- but taking what can be known and examining it, following the strands of the story until they begin to intertwine and establish a thick braid of reality.
The story begins, then, in Part One, with what Maryam saw, heard, and experienced in her day-to-day life as
a peasant Galilean living under foreign rule. It grounds her in her physical, social, and political context -- in her real culture -- and so allows us to see the world, as it were, through her eyes.
Part Two looks at all the issues to do with her pregnancy, starting with how much was known at the time by village midwives and healers, including Maryam herself. It explores the meaning of virginity, and its relationship to fertility. And of course it examines the paradoxical possibilities as to the father of Maryam's child, whether human, divine, or even both.
Part Three focuses on Maryam as a mother, but far beyond the classic image of madonna and child. Starting with the crucifixion of her son -- how does a mother bear such a thing? -- it looks at her role in
the burial and resurrection, where loss is transformed into renewal, and then follows her into active and productive later life.
The picture that develops is of another woman altogether from the one I grew up with, surrounded as I was by images of her in the English convent school I attended for twelve years: statues in the corridors, portraits of her on 'holy cards,' the ever-present rosaries, hymns, invocations... I grew up, that is, with an anodyne, alabaster image. She was always in the same pose, standing with arms slightly outstretched, eyes downcast, mantle falling from head to shoulders to wrists. A modest Mary, never shown pregnant, let alone nursing her child. So modest that in what now seems a cruel stroke of irony, the convent was named not for her, but for her husband: St Joseph's.
I took her for granted, as children do. She was simply there. To be sure, I heard stories of her appearing to children at Lourdes and other places. I even sneaked into the convent chapel to see if the life-size statue of her there would talk to me, though I realized instantly that it wouldn't. Not to me, "the Hebrew girl."
It didn't occur to me then that she too was a Hebrew girl.
This may be the answer to that question "How dare I?" Perhaps my own biography is what gives me license: as a Jew who once seriously considered becoming a rabbi, as a former convent schoolgirl who daydreamed about being a nun, as an agnostic with a deep sense of religious mystery though no affinity for organized religion. Or perhaps I take my license as a woman for whom there is no heroism in "meek and mild," or as a psychologist seeking understanding, or as a journalist seeking out the real story. But if I had to point to one single motivating factor, it would be the old kabbalistic ideal of tikkun olam, repairing the world.
This is what I want: To repair the world of Mary, and weave it anew into whole cloth. To give her back to herself, starting with her real name. To restore
her strength and her intelligence, and see her as the multifaceted human being she was before she became an icon: a peasant, a healer, a nationalist, a mother, a teacher, a leader -- and yes, a virgin, though in a sense we have long forgotten.
It occurs to me now that perhaps this book is my way of finding that Mary did speak to me after all -- not the gilded image in the convent school, but the wiry, dark-skinned, hard-muscled Maryam, barely out of adolescence when she gave birth, her face lined by hard work and harder experience, etched deep by violence and struggle, survival and loss, determination and courage.
There is nothing meek and mild about Maryam. She is neither pale nor passive. She emerges as far more than we have yet accepted her as being: a strong woman of ability and wisdom who actively chose her role in history, and lived it to the fullest.
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(c) Lesley Hazleton, 2004
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