CARVING OUT VIRGINAL SPACE
I’m always reminded, with each return of December’s dance, of that seasonal story of stable births and virginal responses. Just because I’m all grown up and have made room in my life for other stories, that doesn’t mean the old story can’t hold its own.
It’s a yearly reminder, like seasonal changes and income taxes: I’m not honoring my God-energy if I’m not making room in myself. Carving out space within, for God, however we define God — that eternal source and spark of life that yearns for us to be the person we were born to be – is central to the Christmas story.
I’ve recently had a month in which I overextended myself – accomplishing impossible multiple goals in a less-than-adequate time frame combined with two weeks of jury duty that threw my work schedule into chaos; plus pre-arranged commitments for which I could only show up.
I wasn’t anywhere I was, because I wasn’t there, my essence, my soul. I relied on will energy rather than soul energy. I willed myself through the month rather than allow the energy springing from my essence, my passion and vitality – my soul energy – to enliven and carry me. Will energy only depletes the body and ravages the soul. Soul energy replenishes and enlarges.
The consequence of that benevolent neglect was that I was not emotionally present when my daughter and her family came to stay the weekend with me. I tried so hard to be there, but I was exhausted and preoccupied. We both experienced the weekend as a loss of connection.
That young Jewish girl we’ve come to know as Mary is best remembered for her response to God when he suggested he take up residence in her. Without knowing what it would mean for her life, what it would demand of her, without any control of the outcome, Mary is known down the ages for having said, “Let it happen to me.” Or as the Beetles put it, “Let it be.”
It’s no small coincidence that God took up residence in Mary’s body, not her will. It is in our body that we experience our God-energy. Whether Mary was a physical virgin or not, I believe God was in love with her virginal response to life. She had carved away all that distracted her from her ability to fully respond to wherever or whatever her God-energy called forth.
What has all this to do with my recent hellish month? I was so busy willing myself through all the deadlines and demands, I failed to allow the rejuvenating power of that faithful God-energy within to carry and minister to me; to complete, with me, those tasks I had no energy to complete. My body cried out, yet I ignored, bullied, force-fed her until she was totally exhausted.
How would it have been different had I relied instead on soul energy? It would have meant that I was so balanced, within and without, nothing from the outside world could have violated my virginal essence.
It would have meant that, as demands and pressures mounted, I would allow that eternal breathing within me to flow and mingle with my own conscious breathing. I would hear the ocean within me. On my morning walks, I would allow the moon as she played hide and seek with me above the trees to soothe my exhausted spirit. I would feel the stroking of her moonbeams.
What Mary did – what we all must do – is to meet whatever, or Whoever, greets us with an energy and a grounding larger than our own small capacity to will our way through it. Our will isolates us. Our body, with her capacity to feel and to experience, connects us. We connect to our soul energy through our body, and with it, to all of life.
Luckily, life is not like those fairy tales in which the Golden Goddess rings once, then forces the sleeping hero to forever seek a second chance. Life offers second chances moment by moment.