Brooks, Wordsworth and the Visitation
When Elizabeth heard Mary's greeting, the child leaped in her womb. Luke 1:39-45(46-55)
Young pregnant Mary "goes with haste" to see her cousin, friend and protector Elizabeth on foot, through the hill country about 80 miles away. She goes with haste because she is in danger, pregnant, unwed and alone. Elizabeth and her husband Zechariah will take her in and care for her. Upon arrival, Mary's greeting fills Elizabeth with the Holy Spirit, and the child Elizabeth is carrying (John the Baptizer) leaps in his mother's womb, what we might call quickening, a fluttering, bubbling, tapping sensation that a fetus makes in utero. If you have been pregnant, you will know this feeling well. But quickening occurs in many other situations.
In an article entitled "The Shock of Faith: It's nothing like I thought it would be," David Brooks describes a "quickening" experience he had on his spiritual journey. *
One morning in April, I was in a crowded subway car underneath 33rd Street and Eighth Avenue in New York (truly one of the ugliest spots on this good green earth). I looked around the car, and I had this shimmering awareness that all the people in it had souls. Each of them had some piece of themselves that had no size, color, weight or shape but that gave them infinite value. The souls around me that day seemed not inert but yearning — some soaring, some suffering or sleeping; some were downtrodden and crying out.
Brooks also quotes art historian Kenneth Clarke's quickening experience in the presence of an Italian church. “I can only say that for a few minutes my whole being was irradiated by a kind of heavenly joy, far more intense than anything I had known before.”
As I read the familiar passage from Luke this morning, I was especially reminded of William Wordsworth, one of the founders of English Romanticism and one of its most central figures and important intellects. In the poem below, Wordsworth's heart quickens at the vision of a rainbow, and an understanding of who and what he is follows...what a visitation!
My heart leaps up when I behold
A rainbow in the sky:
So was it when my life began;
So is it now I am a man;
So be it when I shall grow old,
Or let me die!
The Child is father of the Man;
And I could wish my days to be
Bound each to each by natural piety.
As we turn the corner to the Nativity, let us each be aware of quickenings, leaps in our hearts and our souls as the nearness of God in the Incarnation approaches. There will be a wee bit more light each day going forward, the better to see the world with, more time in the day to love. May your holiday visits be filled with holiness, peace and love.
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