Last month, we stole all the linchpins from the soldiers’ wagons. A few weeks before that, we threw rotten eggs down on them from the bridge. Tonight, we were waiting for Matt to get here with the sheep dung, so we could shove it in this burlap sack, grab our flint and wool, and sneak over to the barracks, throw it in a bale of hay and set it ablaze. The sleeping soldiers won’t know what hit them.
We could smell him before we could see him. “Got it!” Matt hissed in our ears, dangling the sack of dung in front of our faces. We stifled our laughs, took one last drag on our cigarettes and ran for it. We stepped lightly; we were shadows in the dark. “Go! Go! Go!” We whisper-yelled as we struck the flint; one spark to set the whole pile alight. Then we hid in the woods, the fire flickering in our eyes as we high fived each other for our latest protest against the Roman occupation.
We haven’t gotten caught yet. The trick is, you have to have the element of surprise. Who would ever think that sweet Mary, so meek and mild, good Jewish girl betrothed and waiting, would be such a hooligan, would be out at all hours terrorizing the streets. To this day, they still don’t know that it was me who graffitied all those fish symbols all over Nazareth - that’s my tag in the underpasses, on the government buildings, even on the governor’s chariot.
It wasn’t a big deal. It’s just hay. Not homes like they had done so few years ago. The rubble is still around, a testament to what happens when you don’t toe Caesar’s line. Mom still tells of the night she hid in the caves, watched her home burn, watched her cousins in shackles, corralled into wagons, never to be seen again.
But a tiny surge of power, a blaze of defiance coursed through our bodies as we ran. With our adrenaline pumping, for just a moment, we could ignore our growling bellies, forget our battered mothers, return our fathers’ pride. Take a little power for ourselves for once.
I was breathing hard as I climbed through my bedroom window that night. I cursed as I tore my black tights on the sill. As I shrugged off my jacket and kicked off my boots, my eye caught a faint glow of light coming from the corner. It illuminated my unmade bed, my clothes strewn all over the floor. It reflected off my bleached and magenta-ed hair. Crap. I was in for it now. Mom had caught me. I was grounded for sure. I started scrambling for a story, some explanation for why I was out so late, why my black eyeliner was smudged, why my black painted fingernails were chipped. Mom was used to the protests, to us peasant teens marching in the streets in our free time after chores and worship and the factory. She rolled her eyes as we shouted our curses at the soldiers, shoved our signs into the air, demanded that the billionaires pay their fair share. She even accepted our backpacks full of contingencies in case they brought out the pepper spray or the rubber bullets - bottles of water and vaseline for our eyes, bandanas for our faces, our names and addresses should we get separated. She got used to my dry and cracked voice, turned hoarse from all the shouting. She just shook her head the day I came home with a deep bruise on my shoulder, purple and green and growing from getting caught in the friendly fire of stones we’d been launching at the soldiers. I think, deep down, we knew it wouldn’t do any good. What was a couple dozen punk kids from the wrong side of the tracks gonna do against an entire empire? Probably just get us killed. Still, we shouted. We shouted against the oppression, against the occupation, against the slave labor and the hunger and the poverty; we shouted out into the abyss.
The light grew. “Mom, I’m sorry, I just…” I began to apologize. In my defense, I was going to give her quotes from Hannah’s song, repeat the stories she’d told me about Deborah and Judith, Leah and Miriam. I was about to protest her insistence on pastels, on baby blues and dusty rose, how black is the color of nonconformist dissenters like me. But it wasn’t mom at all. It was just a light that grew brighter with each step forward.
A voice came from the light, all shimmery and descant. It was quiet, but bold. It said,
“Hail Mary, full of grace,” and then fell silent, this pulsating orb hovering over my things, my books, my music, my makeup, my bottles of magenta hair dye.
I looked around. I’m pretty sure they’d got the wrong Mary. I was trouble-maker Mary, anti-conformity Mary, anti-big business Mary, defy the government and shake your fist at authority Mary. Not “highly favored with God Mary.” Not “graceful Mary.” I was the Mary who smoked behind the bleachers and back talked her teachers and asked "What?" And “Why”? and “How”? At all the most inconvenient times. I was the one to defy authority and stick it to the man and play her music so loud the windows shake and the neighbors complain. I tightened my fists. I straightened my shoulders. I wasn’t going down without a fight.
But then it spoke again. It said, “God is with you.”
God? I almost laughed out loud. God left us a long time ago. Left us digging through the ash bins for wood, through the trash heaps for a pair of shoes, a tattered blanket, a little oil for our lamps to get us through the night.
But then I thought about all those near misses when the protests got violent, all those close calls with the Roman soldiers, how somehow, there was always just enough bread to get us through the day.
“Do not be afraid,” it said. And I unclenched my fists. I breathed in deep. I wondered What?And Why? And How?
It answered my unasked questions with only more mystery.
“God is so close to you, God is so near to you, that even your innermost being will be transformed. New life is coming. You will bear the Messiah.”
What? And Why? And How?
It stayed. It answered all my questions. The what, the why, the how.
Now my protests would come in the form of waiting and watching. Now my non-conformity would be revealed as an unwed mother. My marching would no longer be in the streets, spitting on the Roman soldiers, but in the awkward sway of a belly grown too big, in the set of my jaw as people whispered behind my back. The new social order would come about through scandal and mystery and an an angsty teen from the wrong side of the tracks on the bottom side of power singing her radical heart out that this old work is coming to an end.
None of it made sense.
I said “ok.”
I would need all the courage I’ve ever had. More courage than marching the streets, more courage than facing the soldiers, more courage than lighting that hay bale fire.
Ok. Let’s do this, whatever “this” is.
And the angel disappeared.
I was alone again.
This all must have just been a hallucination. A bad trip or the bass turned up too high.
But then the flutters. And the nausea. And the strange cravings.
I ran to Elizabeth.
Would I be safe there?
Would she believe me?
For eighty miles I walked and rode, hitched a ride, followed the road to see if what the angel said was true.
My stomach churned.
My eyes were dark with mascara and exhaustion.
And when I got there, there she was, big and round and glowing.
I said hello.
She smiled, brought me in. Took my shoes. Rubbed my feet. She knew why I was there.
“How can I survive this? What am I going to do?” What? And Why? And How? I asked her.
“You are Mary the anti-authoritarian, you are Mary the anti-consumerist. You are Mary, the anti-colonialist. You are Mary, chosen by God. And you are going to sing,” she said.
And so, I sang a subversive anthem of God’s grand reversal.
This is my punk rock song.
I am Mary, born on the wrong side of the tracks, beaten, abused, malnourished, a nothing.
I am Mary, angry, angsty, young.
I am Mary, poor, powerless, radical.
I am Mary, and all of this is going to come crashing down.
No longer will the rich stand on the backs of the poor. They will have to fight for their bread.
I am Mary, carrier of the one who brings a new social order, a new kingdom, where everything is turned upside down.
This empire will not break us.
Because God is on our side.
Just as our cities and towns have been reduced to rubble, so God will reduce the powerful.
This child is the rock I throw at all who tax the bread, who stand at the borders, who bomb our cities, who kill our children.
I am Mary. I say no to the colonizers. I say no to the military state. I say no to the billionaires, the powerful elite.
I am Mary, and I say yes to God, yes to the radical upending of the status quo. I say yes to the transformation of this world, right here, right now, not just in some far off next.
The kingdom is here, now, inside of me. The resistance grows like the multiplying of cells.
I am Mary. And this is my song.
Thanks be to God.
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