How strongly connected are we to our rellies? Mary & Elizabeth share a strong bond, & clearly not just a 'miraculous', spiritual one. Family can be a healthy form of networking, healthier than much of the wheeling & dealing that goes under that name. How much of a networker am I? To what end? Is it always to God's end, as here with Mary & Elizabeth? Whose network am I consciously or even unwittingly part of? Is God at the heart of my networking? Is God the source of it, central to it, its goal?
The two women getting together, & the (virtual) quoting of Hannah's song of 1000 + years before, exemplifies the kind of 'matriarchal' networks that existed in Hebrew Bible times. Despite patriarchal efforts to ignore them when writing down the people's God stories, & thus dispose of them! God says, "You can't dispose of people like that. They're part of my story too." A critical reading of the Gospels & early church stories show the same kind of squeezing out of women happened there, too. The same kind of conservative mindset that operated then (what are they really trying to conserve?) still fights to keep women - or others - in their place (at the rear!) in some of today's churches. Is there any serious evidence that attitude is God's will, or is it just what I'd like to think is God's will because it suits my mindset? If I think that way, it says more about me, & about the kind of God I imagine, than about the womenfolk, et al.
Are we conscious of the many & varied extra-church networks out there in our community, & what part they play in the lives of many who live beyond our church boundaries? Might they be more a part of (not apart from) God's networking than we give them credit for? Even more a part than we are? Ouch! That hurt!
Many years ago a lecturer quoted someone (I don't remember whom) as saying: 'The red flag looks dull when Our Lady sings Magnificat in tones so sweet & low' - or words very similar. It was the most interesting thing he ever said to us. I've long pondered those poetic, imaginative words, though forgetting anything else he ever taught us.
With the widespread demise of Evensong, we don't often get the chance to sing along with Our Lady, except when we say the 'Office', or God prods us in our hearts. Which, on reflection, is probably more important than singing Evensong! A few years ago, 'liberation' theology took up the plight of the lowly, the hungry, & the like. But once the ecclesiastical establishment - lay & ordained, with maybe the strongest reaction coming from the former who prop up the former - realised that to make Hannah's (& then, later, Mary's) words really happen, the proud, the powerful, the rich, & the like, have tobe confronted, churches took refuge again in singing Magnificat instead of making it happen as a sign of God's Rule in our midst. There are a lot of people out there disappointed in our failure to stand up for, stand by, stand with God's little people. One of the paradoxes we condemn ourselves to live with is thus the number of those outside any church working on what Scripture declares to be God's agenda. How about we focus anew on that agenda as Jesus did & still does by his Spirit working in us & out through us? How about we pledge not to sing Magnificat again until we're singing along completely in tune with God?!
