Friday in the Seventh Week of Easter: The better part

Lessons: Psalm 102; Ezekiel 34:17-31; Hebrews 8:1-13; Luke 10:38-42

Jesus he entered a certain village, where a woman named Martha welcomed him into her home.  She had a sister named Mary, who sat at the Lord's feet and listened to what he was saying.  But Martha was distracted by her many tasks; so she came to him and asked, "Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me to do all the work by myself? Tell her then to help me."  Luke 10:38-40

In most relationships, be they marriage or family or chosen friendship, there is a Martha and a Mary.  At best they are a balance that makes the whole work.  At worst they are lives that miss each other, forgetting to value opposite. In truth by the end of our lives we may well find both within.

It is not always easy for the Martha in us to notice this. So whirling can our lives become that we feel the need of aid.  So much must be done each day to make the whole work that if we are a Martha, as I tend to be, Marys make us impatient. Why must so much time be spent on the paper or computer or book or quiet? It seems a wasteful mystery. That is until from a quiet corner some wisdom comes or some more inventive play or some inner beauty or depth.  Can our Martha stop and notice?  Can the pace slow to see the other?  That has been the challenge of my life because I am always attracted to the introvert, the one who seems to sit quietly often, who speaks considered thoughts, who is a mystery to me.

But the Lord answered her, "Martha, Martha, you are worried and distracted by many things; there is need of only one thing. Mary has chosen the better part, which will not be taken away from her."  Luke 10:41-42

It has taken a lifetime for me to find my Mary, my better part perhaps.  There is this part that can rest and listen and ponder and be which I have always known but forgot to value when so much effort was required to keep much afloat.  I do not think Jesus overlooked it.  I think he merely knew that while on the surface the commanding part seems to save life daily with its schedules to be kept, the quiet place is the place where meaning is fingered and absorbed.  This is the needful thing.

Enjoy this poem, Mary and Martha by Gabriela Mistral.

They were born together, lived together,
ate together – Martha and Mary.
They closed the same door,
drank from the same well,
were watched by one thicket,
clothed by one light.

Martha’s cups and dishes clattered,
Her kettles bubbled.

Her chicken yard teemed with roosters,

a whirr of plover and dove.
She bustled to and fro

lost in a cloud of feathers.

Martha cut the air, reigned

over meals and linen,

governed wine press and beehives,

ruled the minute, the hour, the day...

A wounded outcry sounded

wherever she came and went.
Dishes, doors, bolts clamored
as to a belled sheep.
But all grew hushed when her sister passed by,
thin keening and Hail Marys.

In a whitewashed corner,

Mary in blue Majolica
wove some strange thing in the quiet air
though she never raised her hand.
What was this thing that never finished,
never altered or increased?

One golden-eyed noon
while Martha with ten hands in the air
was reshaping old Judea
without a word or sign, Mary passed on.

 She merely grew more languid,

her cheeks withdrawn;
the mark of her body and spirit
imprinted on old lime,
a trembling fern,
a slow stalactite;
no more than a great silence
that no cry or lightening bolt could shatter.

When Martha grew old,
Oven and kitchen grew quiet,
The house gained its sleep,
The ladder lay supine;
and falling asleep,
her flesh shriveling from ruddy to ash,
Martha went to crouch
in Mary’s corner
where with wonder and silence
her mouth scarcely moved…

She asked to go to Mary
and toward her she went,
she went murmuring, “Mary!” – only that,
repeating, "Mary!"
And she called out with such fervor

that without knowing, she departed,

letting loose the filament of breath

that her breasts did not protect.

Now she left ascending the air;
now she was no longer and did not know it….