Advent Reflection 2: Mary

She was thirteen or thereabouts,
pregnant,
still a child herself.
No vote, no rights, no husband,
no education,
in a small village in an occupied land.
So why would you,
the Great God of the Universe,
pick this peasant girl?
Why not some queen
dressed in blue and gold
like those statued madonnas?

I think we've had it wrong all along.
It's not that she was so saintly,
so pure,
so serene, so special,
but that she wasn't special at all.
Maybe she even had zits.
It was God picking someone mundane,
to show that we are all special,
God choosing what is simple
to confound the wise,
the banal
to shock the glitterati,
the castdown
to shame the exalted.

Mary understood,
Why has God chosen me, a handservant?
To pull the mighty down from their thrones,
and raise up the lowly,
to fill the hungry with good things
while the rich walk away empty-handed.

She could have been any downtrodden woman,
broken,
child of oppression.
In fact,
that is who she always is,
always has been,
and those peasant children of hers
have been messiahs,
but we  were too busy
with our census, our mutual funds
our wars
to notice.