Today is the Feast of the Annunciation – March 25th an exact nine months before the mass celebrating the birth of Christ. We women know that pregnancy, like life, is messier than that – rarely following some to the minute timetable. I, for one, doubt that Mary would have traveled during the usual period of confinement, and was probably confronted with an unexpected early labor as the result of her travels. But we women weren’t the ones to set these dates.
What I find interesting though are a couple of the posts I have seen today on the nature of the annunciation itself. Quiet posts, it seems, almost if they were whispered, afraid of their reception. “What really happened,” they ask, “when that angel visited Mary to bestow on her that seed of the divine?” What generally happens when a man decides he desires a woman in that way is the answer they imply. But to speak such a thing in reference to a holy event is often unthinkable. It is less taboo to evoke the Greek tradition of mythology, recounting the ravishments of the poor maidens one god or another took a liking to. But the unspoken question remains – is Mary simply standing-in for Leda’s encounter with a divine winged being – “A sudden blow: the great wings beating still above the staggering girl, her thighs caressed by the dark webs, her nape caught in his bill, He holds her helpless breast upon his breast.” (W.B. Yeats)
Part of me wants to just deny what it may have meant to have been propositioned by God. I’ve even argued on this blog in years past that I just can’t believe in that sort of God. I’ve willed myself to reject Rossetti’s painted portrayal of a frightened Mary (seen here) and take Mary’s response of “I am the Lord’s servant, May it be to me as you have said” as a sign of strength. I had to believe that the soul that sung the Magnificat joined in willingly in this act of creating new life, and perhaps I still do believe it. But I struggle with the knowledge that this is a topic the church tries to avoid. Why is the question only raised in hushed apologetic tones? Why can’t we stop being silent about the ways women, especially biblical women, have been used just for their bodies?
I am currently reading Azar Nafisi’s memoir Things I Have Been Silent About regarding her years growing up in Iran before the Islamic Revolution. In reflecting on her cultural traditions, she commented that in Iran, memoirs and histories only focus on great deeds and events. When her father published his memoir, all personal anecdotes and reflections were expunged as insignificant. But those stories were actually the substance of life, leaving the remaining narrative of seemingly heroic events hollow. She then decided to write about the things she had been silent about – the daily joys and vicissitudes of real life. And these stories included the personal experiences of the rampant sexual abuse of children common in a culture of severe sexual repression. These children were silenced by their guilt even as victims. In the name of protecting the glories of a great religion, the truth remained generally untold.
But of course the truth is that sexual abuse surrounds us. One in four women report being sexually abused at some point in their lives. And given that most women I know who bothered to report such abuse were laughed at by the authorities, I assume the actual statistics are far higher. Most of us are taught early on to shrug it off, “boys will be boys, they can’t help themselves…” and so forth. Christian groups try to hide incidents of rape in their midst, and I know a Christian publisher who refused to print a story of date rape at a Christian College because it would be too inappropriate for their readership. The Catholic Church is finally having to deal with years of sexual abuse by their assumed representations of God on earth, but it is too little too late.
We have been silent about the sexual abuse of women in the church. Our stories (our bodies) have been dismissed as insignificant. Our Bible stories reduce women to mere sex objects, useful as pleasure providers or wombs. They gloss over the rape and trafficking incidents as if it was natural for men to simply use women in such ways. We are taught that it is our fault if a man decides to abuse us. And perhaps like Mary, some women have learned that when confronted by a powerful man claiming to be God’s messenger we have no choice to but to meekly say “may it be to me as you have said.” When the stories don’t get told, or are excused away, the environment simply remains ripe for the abuse to continue. Perhaps I too need to stop convincing myself that there isn’t terror in the annunciation and simply be willing to hear that side of the story.
So on this day honoring of the Annunciation (be it a remembrance of blessing or violence), I offer a poem to break the silence. Nicola Slee, writing in response to Phyllis Trible’s book Texts of Terror ( a book which looks at some of the terrible deeds carried out against women in the Bible), in it exhorts us to continue to read and not to dismiss those stories, and to use the horror we feel to fuel our prayers. I encountered it recently at Sally Coleman’s blog in her posts addressing the practice of “corrective rape” of lesbians in Africa and a recent incident in Brazil where a doctor was excommunicated from the church for performing an abortion on a 9 year old girl who had become pregnant after being repeatedly raped by her stepfather (he faced no such discipline). May it help us break the silence.
Should we remember Hagar, Tamar, Jephthah’s daughter, and
Lot’s?
Should we tell of their wretched lives to our daughters?
Should we speak on our lips the tales of torture, misery, abuse and
violence?
Would we do better to consign them to silence?
We will listen, however painful the hearing,
for still there are women the world over
being raped
being whipped
being sold into slavery
being shamed
being silenced
being beaten
being broken
treated as worthless
treated as refuse.
Until there is not one last woman remaining
who is a victim of violence.
We will listen and we will remember.
we will rehearse the stories and we will renounce them.
we will weep and we will work for the coming of the time
when not one baby will be abandoned because of her gender
not one girl will be used against her will for another’s pleasure
not one young woman will be denied the chance of an education
not one mother will be forced to abandon her child
not one woman will have to sell her body
not one crone will be cast off by her people to die alone.
Listen then, in sorrow.
Listen in anger, Listen to the texts of terror.
And let us commit ourselves to working for a world
in which such deeds may never happen again…