In anticipation of the Feast of the Nativity of John the Baptist on June 24, I offer this tender poem by Sister Maura Eichner in which the elderly Elizabeth speaks to her son, John, while he’s still in utero. She senses his life will end early and wishes to keep him safe forever, away from the burdens and perils of a prophetic vocation, away from Herod’s order of imprisonment, away from the lethal spite of Herodias and her daughter-pawn, Salome, whose dancing trophy of choice is John’s head on a platter.
Elizabeth is faithful to God and God’s will—just yesterday, in the company of her also-pregnant cousin Mary, she praised God for the coming Messiah whom even the fetal John recognized, leaping. But as great an honor as it is that her son has been chosen to herald the Messiah, her maternal instinct is to shield and protect him. In the dark of midnight, while her husband, Zechariah, is asleep, she whispers her fears rolled up in a charge, instructing John to savor the shelter of her womb while he still can, as soon he will enter the world’s wilderness and eventually preach himself to a martyr’s death.
For scripture texts that inform Sister Maura’s “Dialogue at Midnight,” see Luke 1 and Matthew 14:1–12.
Sister Maura Eichner, SSND (1915–2009), was a Catholic nun, poet, and professor of literature and creative writing. Born Catherine Alice Eichner in Brooklyn, New York, she took vows with the School Sisters of Notre Dame in 1933 at age eighteen. In 1943 she was assigned to teach in the English Department at the College of Notre Dame of Maryland (now Notre Dame of Maryland University) in Baltimore, where she continued until 1992, serving also as department chair. She published ten books of poetry during her lifetime, including The Word Is Love (1958) and Hope Is a Blind Bard (1989), and maintained correspondence with such writers as Flannery O’Connor, Richard Wilbur, Katherine Anne Porter, and Eudora Welty. She experimented with a diversity of poetic forms and subject matter and disliked religious poetry that is redolent of “thin piety” and “decoratively sweet nosegays,” she told The New York Times in a 1959 interview.
Two women, both pregnant, greet each other—and an instantaneous bond is formed between and deep within them, confirming their identities as bearers of life. In this astonishing moment of communion, each is strengthened in her calling.
This is the story of Mary and Elizabeth, but it is also the story of each of us. Truth always encompasses both the particular and the universal—which is why the ancient biblical account stirs such deep chords when women hear it.
In Luke’s description of Mary’s visit to Elizabeth, profound joy is predicated upon fear. The angel has just announced to the younger woman that she is to give birth; and she has accepted God’s calling to a pregnancy out of wedlock, in ancient Judea a crime of adultery against one’s betrothed. The punishment for such a sin, as Mary would have known, was death by stoning. This cultural background gives pointed meaning to the report that Mary “went with haste into the hill country . . .” The image is not so much Christendom’s traditional view of a young mother-to-be paying a visit to a beloved kinswoman but of a terrified, unmarried woman (perhaps, indeed, only a teenager) fleeing for her life to the temporary asylum of a “safe house” in the hills. The aged Elizabeth, the woman whom Mary seeks out for comfort, protection, and advice, is herself caught up in tenuous circumstances: well advanced in years and beyond the biological age of childbearing, Elizabeth must certainly have had her own collection of fears and hopes about her forthcoming delivery.
Both are women on the fringe of their society. The stirring words recalling their encounter and the spark of Life that it caused to leap within them weave a story of hope overcoming deathly fear. It is a reaffirmation of the importance of our mutual support, our community as women, in enabling us to continue bearing life into the world.
HYMN FOR THE FEAST OF THE VISITATION: “Somewhere I hear the church bells ringing” by Gracia Grindal: There are many church songs on the Magnificat, the canticle Mary sings in Luke 1:46–55 when she greets her cousin Elizabeth at Elizabeth’s home in the hills of Judea, but very few hymns, at least in Protestantism, that narrate the Visitation event that occasions it, including Elizabeth’s glad affirmations. Gracia Grindal’s “Somewhere I hear the church bells ringing” is one example of the latter—a four-stanza hymn she wrote in 2010 for the Feast of the Visitation, celebrated every year on May 31, with Elizabeth as the poetic speaker. The hymn captures the excitement of the Messiah coming into the world, and references an Alfred Lord Tennyson poem along the way.
On her blog Hymn for the Day, Grindal provides the lyrics and a reflection on this hymn, as well as sheet music that uses a melody Daniel Charles Damon wrote specifically for the text, which is also available in Damon’s collection Garden of Joy (Hope Publishing, 2011). For public-domain tune alternatives, Grindal suggests DISTRESS or KEDRON from William Walker’s Southern Harmony (1835), or the Renaissance tune by Thomas Tallis known as TALLIS’ CANON—all three of which are commonly used with Fred Pratt Green’s twentieth-century hymn “O Christ, the Healer, We Have Come.”
A professor emerita at Luther Seminary in St. Paul, Minnesota, Gracia Grindal is a prolific writer and translator with expertise in Scandinavian hymns. She has served on several hymn committees and boards and is the author of A Treasury of Faith, a three-volume series of over seven hundred hymn texts on the lessons of the Revised Common Lectionary (Wayne Leupold Editions, 2006–9); Preaching from Home: The Stories of Seven Lutheran Women Hymn Writers (Eerdmans, 2011); an English translation of Hallgrímur Pétursson’s Icelandic Passíusálmar (Hymns of the Passion) (Hallgrím Church, 2020); and Jesus the Harmony: Gospel Sonnets for 366 Days (Fortress, 2021), among many other books.
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SUBSTACK POSTS:
>> “The Slow Way: On Being ‘at Peace and in Place’” by Micha Boyett, The Slow Way: When her third child was born with Down syndrome, Micha Boyett, an emerging writer, knew she needed to release herself from the anxiety of producing and focus on parenting; she decided to slow down in order to be faithful to her son. Drawing on themes in her new book, Blessed Are the Rest of Us: How Limits and Longing Make Us Whole, Boyett reflects in this post on the slow, remarkable, intricate work God does when we “allow all that we are to nourish the place we find ourselves”; when we let go of plans and rest in the goodness of what God has for us at this moment. “Rest is something that nourishes our long-term lives. And rarely, if ever, does rest improve our influence, our finances, or our platforms,” she writes. “Rest is an invisible gift to ourselves that results in invisible growth, invisible peace, invisible relational wholeness.”
>> “Word Games with George Herbert” by Grace Hamman, Medievalish: This Herbert poem was new to me, and what a delight it is! It consists of five tercets, each with an end word that gradually diminishes through loss of a letter with each subsequent line—e.g., CHARM, HARM, ARM. Playing this word game, Herbert develops the conceit of himself as a tree in God’s enclosed garden-orchard.
“The Nuingetonn Peeche” from the Tradescants’ Orchard, 1620–29. Oxford, Bodleian Library MS. Ashmole 1461, fol. 105r.
I always enjoy the literary works, which are mostly medieval or early modern, that Dr. Grace Hamman explores through her newsletter and podcast—and the “Prayer from the Past” she curates for each newsletter sign-off, like the one in this edition, by Richard Brathwait (1588–1673).
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SONG: “Te Atua” (Dear Lord): I heard this popular New Zealand hīmene (hymn) in the Taika Waititi–directed movieBoy (2010) (such a great movie!). It’s a traditional Māori Christian text, set to the Appalachian folk tune NEW BRITAIN (best known for its pairing with “Amazing Grace”) and performed in 1997 by the St. Joseph’s Māori Girls’ College Choir, featuring soloist Maisey Rika. The arrangement is by the college’s principal, Georgina Kingi. Bearing echoes of Jesus’s parable of the sower, this song is particularly appropriate for the season of Ordinary Time that we’re now in, during which the seeds that were planted in us in the first half of the Christian year germinate, grow, and bear fruit.
E te Atua kua ruia nei Ö purapura pai Hömai e koe he ngákau hou Kia tupu ake ai
E lhu kaua e tukua Kia whakangaromia Me whakatupu ake ia Kia kitea ai ngá hua
A má te Wairua Tapu rá Mátou e tiaki Kei hoki ki te mahi hé Ö mátou ngákau höu
Dear Lord, you have spread Your seeds of goodness Give us new hearts So that these seeds may grow
Dear Lord, do not allow These seeds to be lost But rather let them grow So that the results may be seen
May the Holy Spirit Guide us Lest our hearts should Return to our evil ways
>> Message Songs by the Porter’s Gate: For this album, the Porter’s Gate Worship Project partnered with the Eugene Peterson Center for Christian Imagination at Western Theological Seminary to set to music excerpts from Peterson’s best-selling translation of the Bible, The Message. Included are adaptations of Psalms 5, 16, 27, and 121, Matthew 11:28–30, Luke 15, and John 1—by a range of songwriters. The album release this month coincided with the publication of The Message Anniversary Edition, available from NavPress.
>> Volume 10 (Ordinary Time) of The Soil and The Seed Project: This double album—which is completely free!—features twenty-four songs by musicians of faith under the direction of Seth Thomas Crissman, a Mennonite pastor, educator, songwriter, and multi-instrumentalist from Harrisonburg, Virginia. Here’s one of the songs, “The Way Your Kingdom Comes” by Lindsey FitzGerald Stine, sung by her and her sister Rachel FitzGerald:
The music is one element of a larger project that also includes liturgies and newly commissioned artworks. Learn about the project’s free summer concert series on their Events page, which will feature contributors to the most recent album and other friends.
In the days of King Herod of Judea, there was a priest named Zechariah, who belonged to the priestly order of Abijah. His wife was a descendant of Aaron, and her name was Elizabeth. Both of them were righteous before God, living blamelessly according to all the commandments and regulations of the Lord. But they had no children, because Elizabeth was barren, and both were getting on in years.
Once when he was serving as priest before God and his section was on duty, he was chosen by lot, according to the custom of the priesthood, to enter the sanctuary of the Lord and offer incense. Now at the time of the incense offering, the whole assembly of the people was praying outside. Then there appeared to him an angel of the Lord, standing at the right side of the altar of incense. When Zechariah saw him, he was terrified; and fear overwhelmed him. But the angel said to him, “Do not be afraid, Zechariah, for your prayer has been heard. Your wife Elizabeth will bear you a son, and you will name him John. You will have joy and gladness, and many will rejoice at his birth, for he will be great in the sight of the Lord. He must never drink wine or strong drink; even before his birth he will be filled with the Holy Spirit. He will turn many of the people of Israel to the Lord their God. With the spirit and power of Elijah he will go before him, to turn the hearts of parents to their children, and the disobedient to the wisdom of the righteous, to make ready a people prepared for the Lord.” Zechariah said to the angel, “How will I know that this is so? For I am an old man, and my wife is getting on in years.” The angel replied, “I am Gabriel. I stand in the presence of God, and I have been sent to speak to you and to bring you this good news. But now, because you did not believe my words, which will be fulfilled in their time, you will become mute, unable to speak, until the day these things occur.”
Meanwhile the people were waiting for Zechariah, and wondered at his delay in the sanctuary. When he did come out, he could not speak to them, and they realized that he had seen a vision in the sanctuary. He kept motioning to them and remained unable to speak. When his time of service was ended, he went to his home.
After those days his wife Elizabeth conceived, and for five months she remained in seclusion. She said, “This is what the Lord has done for me when he looked favorably on me and took away the disgrace I have endured among my people.”
—Luke 1:5–25
LOOK: Zacharias and Elizabeth by Stanley Spencer
Stanley Spencer (British, 1891–1959), Zacharias and Elizabeth, 1913–14. Oil and graphite on canvas, 142.6 × 142.8 cm. Tate Britain, London.
The modern British artist Stanley Spencer is famous for his paintings depicting the New Testament narrative unfolding in his small village of Cookham on the River Thames. The English countryside was a balm for him after his return from World War I, as in it he sensed the Divine. “Quite suddenly I became aware that everything was full of special meaning, and this made everything holy,” he said. “The instinct of Moses to take his shoes off when he saw the burning bush was very similar to my feelings. I saw many burning bushes in Cookham. I observed the sacred quality in the most unexpected quarters.”
Like Spencer’s other biblical paintings, Zacharias and Elizabeth features people and places that were familiar to him. Tate Britain, the museum that owns the work, describes it like this:
In the foreground of the composition is Zacharias, an elderly male figure dressed in white who is holding a pair of tongs over a flame, while another aged male, also wearing white – the Archangel Gabriel – approaches him stealthily from behind. The figure of Zacharias is also repeated in the background of the painting: behind a wood and metal fence, staring blankly outward while the auburn-haired Elizabeth stands to his right with her arms outstretched. A large, smooth, curved wall divides the painting vertically, separating these two scenes. The figure of Elizabeth appears again behind the wall, with only her upper body visible. Two further figures are also depicted in the painting: a gardener who resembles traditional representations of both Jesus and John the Baptist is seen at the right dragging an ivy branch, a conventional symbol of everlasting life and Resurrection, and an unidentified woman wearing a dark claret dress kneels behind a gravestone while touching the curved dividing wall with her right hand.
Art critic and curator Sarah Milroy interprets this woman in the left midground as a surrogate for Spencer. She writes,
In childhood, Spencer believed that the Bible stories his father read aloud to the family at night could be glimpsed in Cookham, if only he could get a peek over top of the cottage walls. The little girl with her feverish, ember-red eyes, spying on the holy scene from her hiding place behind the curved white wall, serves as a stand-in for the artist himself.
For another meditation I wrote on a Spencer painting, see “Resurrection Now,” part of the Visual Commentary on Scripture project.
LISTEN: “Zechariah and the Least Expected Places” by Ben Thomas, on The Bewildering Light by So Elated (2008)
Jerusalem and the holy temple filled with smoke Zechariah shuns the news from the angel of hope Stuck behind an incense cloud of religion and disappointment
God keeps slipping out of underneath rocks In alleys off the beaten path Open both your eyes
Prophets and kings and poets can contribute their work Just like eggs in a nest are alive with the promise of birds But the Lord of creation will not be subjected to expectation
God keeps slipping out of underneath rocks In alleys off the beaten path Open both your eyes
Elizabeth, barren, her knees black and dirty like coal Her consistent prayers float to the sky and revive her soul God, we will wait though we don’t understand your redemptive story
God keeps slipping out of underneath rocks In alleys off the beaten path Open both our eyes
Art & Theology 