“Mary said:Everybody has a song - Nations have anthems, lovers have ballads, children have lullabies. We’ve special songs for weddings, birthdays in every culture. When you are depressed, happy, when you want to protest, when you are in the shower, you’ve got a song. That’s one reason why IPods are such popular gifts. It gives us the power to put our life to its own song track and it fuels our imaginations for life.
My soul proclaims your greatness, O, God,
And my spirit rejoices in you, my Savior.
For you have looked with favor
Upon your lowly servant,
And from this day forward
All generations will call me blessed.
For you, the Almighty, have done great things for me,
And holy is your Name.
Your mercy reaches from age to age
For those who fear you.
You have shown strength with your arm,
You have scattered the proud in their conceit,
You have deposed the mighty from their thrones
And raised the lowly to high places.
You have filled the hungry with good things,
While you have sent the rich away empty.
You have come to the aid of Israel your servant,
Mindful of your mercy –
The promise you made to our ancestors –
To Sarah and Abraham
And their descendants forever.”
There is a people in Africa who believe that we humans are each created having a unique melody, some music that is our own. Their tradition “is to honor that song by singing it as welcome when a child is born, as comfort when the child is ill, in celebration when the child marries, and in affirmation and love when death comes.”
It takes a while to figure out our song, and to distinguish it from the song that others want us to sing. Imagine having a tune that is just our own; a song living in us that describes us to the world; a song that we sometimes hear the world sing back to us; a song that is there, no matter it be day or night, ready to comfort, celebrate, sustain and guide us. Imagine that and ask yourself, what’s your song?
Mary burst out with quite a song. We know it as the “Magnificat”. It is a song of jubilee and justice. It dares to see the world upside down. It sings of the fall of the proud, the powerful, the rich and the rising of the lowly, the hungry, the servant. It is the kind of revolutionary tune might get you imprisoned or even killed. And that’s why it is such an enduring song.
In the muted world we live, poor, unmarried mothers and their babies don’t stand a chance; strangers are not welcomed; the gap between rich and poor is widening rather than reversing. Out there, the sky stays dark and silent. No angels, no trumpets, no guiding star, no good news, just the cold hard facts of life.
But with Mary’s song our muted imaginations get assaulted and pushed to the limits by images, lyrics, and dangerous ideas about what can and can’t be. They fuel our imagination for a new and just world. And you can’t do justice until you can imagine a world that’s just. The Magnifcat is the kind of risky, daring song that makes justice possible and permissible.
The Hindu poet, Rabindrinath Tagore says, “I have spent my days stringing and unstringing my instrument while the song I came to sing remains unsung.” Consumed by tasks, paralyzed by facts, waiting for more data… we leave our song unsung. There is a reason why people sing when they march. It fuels them, it cuts through the cold hard facts, and it awakens the courage to act like no data can.
In light of Mary’s subversive lyrics, I think it’s fitting we let Emma Goldman, the noted anarchist, have the last words. Emma loved to dance. One evening a boy took her aside, and with a grave face whispered to her that it did not behoove an agitator to dance, certainly not with such reckless abandon anyway. It was undignified for one who was on the way to become a force in the anarchist movement.
Emma was furious and told him to mind his own business. She was tired of having the Cause constantly thrown into her face. She didn’t believe that a Cause which stood for a beautiful ideal, for release and freedom from convention and prejudice, should demand the denial of life and joy. The Cause could not expect her to become a nun and that the movement would not be turned into a cloister.
"I want freedom, the right to self-expression, everybody's right to beautiful, radiant things." She wrote, “Anarchism meant that to me, and I would live it in spite of the whole world — prisons, persecution, everything. Yes, even in spite of the condemnation of my own closest comrades I would live my beautiful ideal. If I can’t dance, I don’t want your revolution.”
Do you hear the music? Have you answer its call and join the chorus? Born to us this day is a new and just world. Sing, Dance and be a part of the revolution.
