An encounter with the divine

My Bibliodrama experience of Luke 1: 26-39 was an answer to a prayer. The prayer had formed itself the week before during a dance study on Mary, mother of Jesus.

From my journal: As Mary I sit on the floor. I drape my black gauze dress around me like a pedestal. I cover my head and torso with the black veil. I move slowly on the out breath. I bring my hands into a cradle to protect a baby. I rock ever so gently in protection of this fledging being. I am saddened today and I quickly wonder if I can cradle myself. I raise my arms to the sky, in request for inspiration and guidance on this spiritual journey. I pull them in again, bringing them in to bless my heart. I wonder if I am simply empty, ready to be filled with God’s grace.

I am thankful when I have faith that God’s grace blesses me always even when I am unaware.

There were no answers in that moment, but I was touched by the simplicity and the authenticity of my desire.

The following week in Bibliodrama class, I listened to the story of Mary and the angel Gabriel who comes and tells her that she will become pregnant. Amazed and a bit unnerved by this revelation, as she is unmarried and a virgin, she accepts the message as a commitment to her faith. As I listened to the Biblical passage, I realized that it was the same Mary that I had danced in Dance of the Women’s Spirit just the week before. It was the same Mary, who became the mother of God, and who is venerated by millions of people as a guiding light of spiritual continuity. I was meeting her again, this time as an untested and innocent, standing on the unborn side of great change.

I took my shawl from around my shoulders and I wrapped it around my head to indicate that I had become Mary. And in that moment, the gesture that came to me was to place my right hand at my left shoulder, and lay it across my chest. I cradled my right elbow in my left hand. It was a pre-birthing gesture, a gesture of nurturing myself, as if a child. The phrase that came to mind was “portent to be.”

Joyce Hollyday, in the introduction of “Clothed with the Sun,” uses the word portent as an indication of momentous and marvelous things that are about to occur. The realization that Mary had no indication of the greatness that would come as a result of the news that was frightening her in the present, was the answer to my prayer the week before.

Suddenly I felt supported in my quest to transform myself into a vessel of the holy. And I interpreted the message of “portent to be” as divine communication. I understood the gesture and the phrase as the answer to the prayer that I would have the strength and the perseverance to birth myself into a more fully whole and spiritually aware being. I understood the message that we never know when we embark where we will end and I should have confidence in the benevolence of the journey. Just like Mary.

I am not so presumptuous to suggest that my life will reach the pinnacle of Mary. But I do believe that we carry God’s spark on earth. We are each a seed, that in conversation with God, can transform into a being who brings divine presence into daily living.

Perhaps it’s an explanation of a virgin birth. Perhaps we can all encounter a messenger who brings tidings of great joy and good news. Perhaps we can all experience the Holy Spirit entering our body and giving birth to a faith and a commitment to a life that is filled with love, hope and divine presence.