Seeker

An older woman is full of joy as she greets her younger cousin. They are both pregnant and may both the subject of malicious gossip.  Elizabeth is too old to be pregnant. She has been married to Zechariah a long time and no babies have come from their marriage. Women deemed 'barren' were scorned - hard enough in itself. or was the problem with the husband? If Zechariah had failed to impregnant her after so many years, did the village gossips of Ein Karem wonder if Elizabeth's much belated pregnancy was by a younger man? Elizabeth's young cousin Mary is scarcely old enough to be pregnant. Have Mary's parents sent her far away to the hill country of Judea on the pretext of helping old Elizabeth, but really to shield her from disgrace in Nazareth before her condition began to show? Mary is pregnant and the father is not her fiance Joseph. Who would believe her story of being visited by an angel and conceiving a child by the Holy Spirit of God? ...

Who are the "two women on the very edge of things"? They could be almost any two - most women in the world are on the edge, powerless or unnoticed. But my title is from Malcolm Guite's sonnet 'The Visitation' published in his collection 'Sounding the Seasons' . The two women in that sonnet are Mary the mother of Jesus and Elizabeth the mother of John the Baptist. 31 May is a day to celebrate the visit that the young pregnant Mary made to her much older and more pregnant cousin Elizabeth. You can read the story in Luke 1: 39-56 . I love the sculpture shown in my photograph taken in the courtyard of the Church of the Visitation at Ein Karem in Israel. Sometimes art conveys more than words can. This is not just an old story of long ago. The miraculous pregnancies of Mary and Elizabeth may be unique but so much of their experience is a universal story. It is repeated many times the world over when old and young women without power support and help ...