Mary and Jesus Print v.1

A small 6x4 print, hand touched with watercolor and signed in ink. Matted, but unframed in clear protective sleeve.

I always think about Mary at Advent, which I know is no great leap. As a woman and as a mother I have always carried some connection to her, but it was abstract and distant. Paintings of Mary, serene and holy, dressed in fine clothes and holding a curiously old infant Jesus, draw me in but somehow still keep me at a distance, her holy beauty so far from my dirty dishes and needy children.  Last year I was babysitting for my new niece, just a few months old and I had occasion to step back into rhythms that I’d left behind some 8 years previous. I went to look for the kitenge fabric that I used to tie my babies on with so I could do a few chores with the sleeping babe, and I thought about Mary. Every culture has a form of wrap that women use to carry infants, because the work of a household never stops. I was thinking of this universality and it occurred to me that surely Mary tied baby Jesus on her back to do chores. It was likely that Jesus was not the first baby to ride snug on her back, younger siblings or cousins may have napped as she helped her mother with chores. Mary, chosen of God, made bread and washed clothes, with God incarnate lulled to sleep by the rhythms of her body at work. This was the Mary I needed to see, because this is the Mary who was faithful to the work that God set for her both the big and small. No matter who we are, regardless of our gender or our maternal status,  we can follow her example of faithfulness and obedience in all the chores of life, all that God asks us to do, both the big and small.