a beautiful rebellion (for the feast of the annunciation)

painting by Jill Kuhlman

If you are reading this in real time, today (March 25th) is the Feast of the Annunciation. Nine months before Christmas, today marks the visit of the angel Gabriel to Mary, telling her she would be the mother of Jesus. A bright spot in the middle of Lent, it is one of my favorite days in the church calendar. The word annunciation, literally meaning “announcement”, represents the prophecy (and fulfillment) of the hope that is to come, of an invisible seed deeply planted that will someday blossom into something wonderful. Every year, on a day that feels so far from the magic of Christmas and in a culture that feels so far from peace, we are reminded that, like Mary, a beautiful rebellion is growing inside of us. 

This story is my favorite in the entirety of the Bible; I have loved it since I was little. At three years old, snuggled on the pastel couch of my childhood home with my mom, we read of the angel’s truly shocking announcement, this first whispering of Christmas. In response to Mary’s totally justified astonishment, I shouted with the angel: “NOTHING IS IMPOSSIBLE WITH GOD!” Before I knew anything about the theology, doctrine, or dogma of this miraculous conception, I loved the young woman who believed this daring declaration with all of herself, and I loved rehearsing it—or re-hear-ing it—over and over again. Since then, I have come to love the story even more, as it reminds me of my own capacity to hold that same spirit of God, the same that conceived new life into Mary’s own body. It reminds me of the sacred space within each of our bodies, a cathedral that is made of flesh and bone and blood and heart. It reminds me that even in our own small and sometimes terrifying beginnings, God is within our quivering bodies, close and intimately connected with us. 

Inspired by Marie Howe’s and Luci Shaw’s poetry about this story and the Biblical text itself, over the last four years I’ve written many poems about this concept of Immanuel, God with Us and in Us, that seems to me to be the crux of our faith. I’ve collected a few of them for you to read below, and I hope that, as you read and ponder and consider a young girl who believed in what felt impossible, the truth of her story becomes tangible. May we allow the seed of hope to be planted inside our own depths, and may this presence of God with-in us fill our aching bones with light.

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an annunciation collection

genealogy

after Luke 3

Where are the ancient women 
hidden, those matriarchs who planted seeds 
in long rows connecting heaven to the dirt 
floors of their homes

Who woke on a Saturday and watched 
their sons ride into battle, 
comforted by the flaming 
eastern sun cresting over the desert hills 

Who told stories as they shook
in the dark from the terror 
of their own dreams, nightmares 
of kings who stole women 

like them away, who were herded 
into exile like cattle and crafted a life 
there anyway, brought up 
families with their own muscular arms

Who waited outside the city once a month
to be made clean, whose hands rested 
on their kicking wombs as they dreaded
in cold sweat the painful labor

and possible death waiting 
for them afterward, who allowed themselves
to be filled again and again, seen 
and implied, but not mentioned 

Who scrubbed and scoured, baked and cradled, 
nursed their babies and wept in the wind,
who threw back their chin and laughed—
overshadowed by mercy and as necessary 

as the rain in early spring,
who woke before the dawn, unsung 
and still aching, hands on the small 
of their backs, 

quietly doing their women’s work 
of tending the garden of the Messiah, 
raising up boys to be named 
and daughters to persist,

each one 
as resilient as Leah, 
as persistent as Ruth,
as chosen as Mary

to grasp hands and form the backbone 
of this holy genealogy 
as they run down the spine 
of the text like marrow, like blood, 

as they open their sacred wombs 
and birth our redemption

As If I Have Wings

Warm. A fire in 
the belly. Slashes of light. 
Deep pain, sudden and 

glorious, somehow. 
A message, story drenched in 
specificity. 

Hand open, hand closed. 
A dance. To say yes or no. 
Nothing is the same. 

Impossible. This 
new thing. This holy, living thing! 
This only thing that 

moves me now. No, not 
so impossible. I am 
broken. Alright. With-

out what I thought I 
knew. Needed. I am 
woman. Prophetess. 

Small. Afraid. Chosen. 
Seen. Filled up to the brim. Free. 
As if I have wings. 

For the Feast of the Annunciation

1. room 
will my heart ever
stop this fearsome pounding, is there
enough room inside 

the small home of my 
body, the tough and tender
walls of my spirit? 

2. first miracle 
when she told him “they’ve
run out of wine,” did she think 
of the burning, the 

shadow, all the 
bittersweet heartaches that lead 
to this beginning?

Declaration

Luke 1:26-39

"Nothing is impossible with God!" I shout, prematurely
as the Annunciation story—
though I did not yet know it by that title—
was read aloud to me 
from a worn-out children’s Bible,
my three-year-old heart bursting 
with an anticipation of a hope 
I could not name. 

Twenty years later and I wish I could shout
those same words with that same abandon but 
spend more time wishing for a dream, a visitation—
jealous of the woman and her husband gifted
with a glimpse 

but then, I remember the gentle inhalation, the shiver
in the darkness under the shadow
of your wing, the extravagant filling
of the hidden place within my own body—an intimate act!—
the Image of the Invisible, the power already but
not yet, and I am brimming over, my cup 
threatening to overflow. 

and you, Holy Thing, gift me with my own
voice and that childlike boldness

Enter the darkness! I cry
Burst forth!
Light the deep darkness! Use me!

But for now, 
a rustle, a whisper. 

painting by Jill Kuhlman

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p.s. If you want to read more about Mary, I’ve written about this story in a few other essays. Find them below, if you so desire!

1. These essays from my 2020 advent series: The Waiting & Songs of Hope

2. This piece from 2018 on Angels

p.p.s. A few other lovely paintings of The Annunciation:

1. Fillipo Lippi

2. Henry Ossawa Tanner