The woman, this being Advent, is of course Mary. Merton, and Catholic tradition with him, holds Mary as central to faith and to devotion. For Merton this necessitates Mary being "empty of all egotism, free from all sin". He goes on to describe her as being pure as the glass of a very clean window that has no other function than to admit the light of the sun"!!! Okay, the gloves are off! Mary was human, as imperfect as you and me, naive, poor, and with a LOT more to offer the world than simply being a vessel to let the Son into the world! Glass has several functions as a window. It lets light and heat in, keeps wind and cold out, and acts as security, as well as providing us with, if we are fortunate, a wonderful view on the world. The more highly polished it is the more dangerous it can be. In fact, funnily enough, i found myself using this "very clean glass" analogy in a blog response the other day to make the very point that a very clean window can cause real damage if you don't know it's there. Follow this link to read the original blog and then my response which is the fourth one down i think:
http://contemplative-scholar.blogspot.com/2009/10/difficult-students.html
He's a Quaker teacher in a small college in the States i think.
Why do we need our saints, our mentors, to be perfect? Why does it lessen the message of the Christmas story to have Mary be utterly human? For me i am reassured, strengthened, vitalised by the complete humanity of all the saints, the "holy" folk of ages past and present. They give me hope!
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perhaps we don't, perhaps it is in ourselves that we long for perfection,
ReplyDeleteperhaps because we cannot see or acknowledge what is already there.
Nice use of son & sun.