I Dream of Mary – Don Hanley’s blog #31

Ah, and my dream continues, only this time, I’m wearing a red and black plaid shirt.

Mary smiled and said, “Well, Don, I’m glad you returned to see me. You asked me about my son, Jesus, and what he was like as a boy, correct?”

I nodded, and she continued, “And I’m still interested in some things you’ve heard about him over the years, right? If I remember correctly, you said centuries, not years, right?” I nodded again, and Mary didn’t give me time to respond before she added, “You made me think back to the many times Jesus talked with Joseph and me about the Jewish heroes of history. Joseph was always interested in it and encouraged our son. Jesus learned to read very early, and I remember him commenting on the first book of the Sacred Scriptures.

‘Mother and Father,’ he would say, ‘This is funny; this book says that God created everything, even us people, in six days.’ He chuckled and said, ‘And he created light, and then, days later, he created the sun. Isn’t that funny?’

“Joseph and I had never thought of that, and we laughed with him. Jesus made us think about the Word of God in an entirely new way. Do people in the future still read the Sacred Word?”

Mary looked at me in a way that indicated that she wanted to know the answer.

I said, “Oh. We call it the Bible or Sacred Scriptures. Some think God Himself wrote it and whispered to the human writer who wrote it down in Hebrew. Do you speak Hebrew?”

“I understand it, but I do not speak it very well. Jesus spoke Hebrew and even read it when he was about five years old – about the same time he read Aramaic. Joseph and other village people were amazed.” Mary shook her head as if she were still amazed.

I had many questions about Scripture that I wanted to discuss with her, but I was more interested in what she had to say about Jesus himself.

“Many people believe that Jesus was, and is, the one and only Son of God. What do you say to that – or would you say to them?”

She looked at the sky, laughed delightfully, and said, “You know, Don, you are talking to a Jewish mother. We all think our sons are the sons of God, you know.” She continued to laugh. "But you mean that they believe that my Jesus was the Son of God – that he was, and you said ‘is,’ the Son of God or, as the Scriptures say, Yahweh. And you know, Yahweh means, ‘I am who I am.’ I heard that when I was listening to men talking when I was a child - that we cannot know the true nature of God. You know, Jesus told both Joseph and me that, after our first trip to Jerusalem. We never found out how he learned that. Oh, imagine for a moment that if God were Jesus’s father, that would mean that God impregnated me.” She sat back, held her stomach with both hands, and laughed heartily.

I hated to interrupt her laughter, but I had to say, “The belief was, and most often is, that God just created a Godman in you, and this was called a ‘virgin birth.’”

Mary looked at me with a mischievous grin and said, “So your believers take all the fun out of it, is that right?”  I nodded and told her that most believers still do, and they call her the Virgin Mother of God.

Again, she burst out laughing and, through tears, pointed at her little house and said, “And does this look like the house a mother of God would live in?”

I nodded and muttered, “I think most still do.”

Regretfully, I woke up. I still hope you continue to . . . 

Nurture your heart and do not eat the menus, even this one.